Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3: ParaPol
by heat3000
Summary: Six years after the events of RES, SEES is a force to be reckoned with. But when a routine raid in Transylvania goes wrong, the original members of SEES must regroup to uncover the truth over the mysterious disappearance of one of their own.
1. Prologue

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

Author's Note: This fanfiction is the direct sequel to Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3: RES. It is _highly recommended_ that you read that fanfiction _first_ before starting this one. It can be found at this URL address:

/s/4324241/1/ShinMegamiTenseiPersona3RES

Thank You, and enjoy the fic!

**Prologue**

Beyond the intense rain and the thunder...beyond the lightning that brought fire through the sky, the blades of two large helicopters could be seen against the silhouette of the moon...

"_Bravo-Romeo-Foxtrot, this is Pope Two, currently five minutes from the drop zone, over!"_

Through the pilots headset, a muffled radio transmission could be heard.

"Rog...Two! This is...command...failure to...mission...late!"

"_This is Pope Two to bravo-romeo-foxtrot. There was static all over that last transmission, please repeat."_ the pilot shouted, before turning around to face the cargo compartment.

"Four minutes!" he shouted. All in all, there were twenty-one troops in the back of the helicopter. On either side of the helicopter were sitting ten shock troops, fully equipped with assault rifles armed with spirit draining ammunition. They wore reinforced, bite proof armor and wore full-head helmets, relying on a series of sensors to provide their HUD's with real-time battlefield information.

That made twenty elite soldiers. As for the twenty-first, he stood near the back of the helicopter, staring outside the cargo door at the raging storm around them. He was dressed in black khakis and wore a white dress shirt with a red vest over it. The small pistol in his side holster matched perfectly with his hair, as it did with the lightning outside.

"Hey buddy! Don'cha think it would be better to close that door!? It's an awful storm outside!" the pilot shouted, temporarily allowing his co-pilot full control over the helicopter.

"No. I'm watching the lightning..." the man said, refusing to jump back even as a bolt of lightning almost hit the extended cargo door of their helicopter.

"Whatever floats your boat, pal!"

"_Pope One, this is Pope Two. Do you have contact with bravo-romeo-foxtrot?"_

"_Pope Two, this is Pope One. Negative. Contact lost one-hundred seconds ago. Assuming mission abort?"_

"_That's a negative, our orders were to put our loads down unless specifically told by bravo-romeo-foxtrot. We will carry out drop operation."_

"_Roger. One-hundred seconds to LZ. Dropping altitude now."_

"_Roger."_

"One-hundred seconds!" the pilot turned around and shouted, seeing that all the shock troops were beginning to get their gear together and load their guns. Their commander, however, still stood motionless in the frame of the chopper, staring blankly out upon the storm.

"Something's not right..." he said, but too low for the pilots to hear. What he _did_ hear, was the deafening sound of the thunder and the pounding of the rain against the helicopter's airframe.

A new communications device, developed by a friend of his and implanted in the base of his skull, near his ear, began to ring, permitting him to communicate directly to whoever it was that had his particular frequency.

"_Hello, _Mr. Sanada! How goes your mission?" a deep male voice shouted into his ear in a deep Eastern European accent.

"Who's this?"

"I can't believe you've forgotten your good friend Colonel Radic! What's wrong with you my boy!?"

"Colonel Radic? Is that really you? Why have you called, you know we can't discuss things right now, I'm in the middle of a-"

Just like that, with the pop of another bolt of lightning, Colonel Radic's call to Akihiko was shut off, before the pilot turned around and shouted one final thing.

"Ten seconds!"

The shock troops behind Akihiko all got up out of their seats to face the open cargo door, just as the helicopter made a swooping motion to avoid hitting the ground and get into a landing position. They had gained enough speed to pass by their 'sister' Chinook helicopter and watch it begin its landing procedure in their full view. They were landing _just_ outside a Romanian village, somewhere in Transylvania, where paranormal activity had been spiking in recent months.

From their point in the air, one could even see the main highway leading through the village and cutting it in half. That is, _if_ one could see through the rain.

"Go! Go! Go! SOP!" the pilot shouted, prompting the shock troops around Akihiko to run out of the helicopter. In the distance, they could see their sister helicopter, Pope One, make its descent into the village.

"Something is not right..." Akihiko said, watching the troops spread out before him in a combat search, ten meters apart, weapons drawn. No doubt their sensors wouldn't be much help in this deluge of water.

Taking a single step out of the cargo bay, Akihiko noticed two things: first, the ground was near impossible to walk in in his loafers. Secondly, what used to be Pope One exploded in a massive fireball of screams and metal, resulting in the rear blade of Pope One to sheer off and make its way down to the ground, where it met one of Akihiko's soldiers.

"I knew something wasn't right! Shit!" Akihiko shouted as his own soldiers made their way to cover. Akihiko, stuck in the mud in his loafers, took them off to make his way into the village in his socks, ducking down behind an old pick-up truck to converse with one of his soldiers.

"Did you see what happened!" he shouted, but still almost inaudible through the storm.

"No, sir! But I can show you what my auxiliary sensors picked up!" the soldier shouted back. He was barely nineteen, probably fresh out of high-school. Where S.E.E.S. found these kids to recruit, he did not know.

"Show me!" he shouted back, forcing the soldier to take off his helmet and give it to Akihiko, who put it on immediately.

The video feed on the helmet showed Akihiko nothing but a slurry of cold rain. Switching over to infrared gained him a better result: the helicopter was descending from its post in the sky, when suddenly, an extreme heat source came from seemingly out of nowhere and blew it out of the sky.

"What did you see, sir!?" the soldier yelled. Cripes he was young! His hair was cut short and spiky and his face was still light. Apparently, this kid was either drafted into S.E.E.S. or he skipped basic training. Either way, it was unnerving to have an untrained and unexperienced soldier next to him in a 'dead zone'.

At least it was, until Akihiko turned back to look over at his other soldiers and assess the situation, before he heard a blood-curling scream come from a pair of soldiers just a few meters to his right.

One was apparently shot, falling onto his back and grasping his chest as tight as he could.

The other simply disappeared into the rainy skies.

"What the-"

"Oh God! Oh, God! Commander! Save m- hurgh!"

It was the soldier who had been crouching next to Akihiko a moment earlier. He had disappeared as well, seemingly vanishing into the night sky. That was what Akihiko used to believe, but in the four seconds he held these beliefs, drops of blood fell onto his silver hair. He was able to distinguish it against the rain because it was warm. Quite warm, in fact, in comparison to the freezing rain around him. Looking up, he saw an Angel of Death sinking its white fangs deep into the boys neck, spewing blood around the immediate area.

"Oh my – shit!" Akihiko shouted, throwing the helmet away from him and scrambling off of the ground towards the helicopter.

"Fall back! Fall ba-" A gust of wind knocked Akihiko down on the ground, and he was able to see the Chinook starting take-off procedures just as he heard more screams around him, along with something else. Gunfire.

Twisting his head backwards so he could see behind him while he lay on the ground, he saw soldiers. Actual soldiers of the Romanian Army, shooting _live_ bullets at his own men. His soldiers, equipped with spirit draining ammunition, were woefully prepared for the slaughter that was about to befall them.

"Shit! Sir, I need ord – Gah!" he heard one soldier scream.

_Get up Akihiko, get the hell up!_ His mind shouted at him, forcing him to jump on his feet and run towards the helicopter before it was too late.

"Wait up you god-forsaken son of a bitch!" he yelled, as the helicopter made its way from the ground slowly into the air, forcing Akihiko to jump into the cargo bay just as the pilots closed its reinforced steel door.

"Sir! What the _fuck_ was that! A god damn _tank_ shot Pope One out of the sky! Then we heard screams and -" the co-pilots words began to break down with each second, until he eventually collapsed from his seat in the cockpit, filled with tears.

Akihiko, now the lone soldier in the cargo bay ran up to the cockpit to check up with both pilots.

"Why the hell did you start to take-off without me!? Without my _men!?_" he asked angrily, gripping the pilot's chair as hard as he could, not wanting to distract him from his flying by grabbing him altogether.

"Sir, with all due respect, what happened to _saving_ your men!?"

"There's only so much I can do against vampires and an entire god damn platoon of _actual soldiers_! They had guns! _Real_ guns! You know, the ones that _kill you_!"

"What about your persona!?" the pilot shouted back.

"There's no way I can take on a tank and group of vampires alone, even with my-"

A thud interrupted his sentence.

"W – what was that?" the pilot asked as Akihiko helped the co-pilot up from the floor and helped him regain his composure.

"I don't know, want me to go outside and check? Or will you try and get me killed _again_?"

"I saved your ass staying as long as I did! If this were a normal operation, I would've been _out of there_ by the time Pope One got taken down by that tank! Now shut the-"

Suddenly, the same Angel of Death, the same vampirical beauty that had killed one of Akihiko's young soldiers, made its way in front of the helicopter's cockpit. It was beautiful and scary at the same time, baring her fangs as well as her naked body to the three men in the cockpit, fluttering her wings to keep at the same pace as the helicopter.

"You know...that babe would be extremely hot if she weren't trying to suck our blood right about now..." the pilot said as Akihiko ran back into the cargo hold to grab a pistol containing hollow-point bullets dipped in Holy Water. Akihiko had thought it was a hassle to bring such things along for this mission, but the order came directly from Mitsuru office.

"See you in Hell, bitch!" Akihiko shouted as he ran back into the cockpit to fire at the vampire. One of the bullets pierced her breast, and she let out an excruciating cry before using her wings to fly upwards, out of sight of the three men.

"Did you kill it?" the co-pilot asked, noting the bullets holes in their cockpit glass.

When they heard a 'thud' a few moments later, followed by the alarm that announced a lack of hydraulic control, the answer was, obviously 'no'.

"Crash landing? No chance for survival?" the co-pilot asked rather calmly. In all honesty, the two pilots were unsure as to whether or not this was real or a simple dream. But as their altimeter began to fall and Akihiko hurriedly got into a seat in the cargo bay, fastening himself in every way possible, the thought of death was the furthest from their minds. Surprisingly, death didn't scare them at all.

_Crashing_ did.

And so, as the S.E.E.S. supercomputers at Yakushima registered the ambush of S.E.E.S. Squad 47 in Transylvania – and the crash of two of their helicopters in the same region – _and_ the probable loss of one of their most senior field commanders, it set into motion the events that would lead to a battle between Good and Evil the world had not seen for six years...


	2. New Dilemma

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter I: New Dilemma**

"So I said to him, keep the wrapper!" Mitsuru said to an audience of her friends in the S.E.E.S. lounge area. They laughed at her joke, for the most part, allowing Mitsuru to sit back in her comfortable chair and listen to the next person's joke.

She found herself doing this a lot lately: sitting in the lounge every afternoon and telling juvenile jokes to people she barely knew from Gekkoukan, but Gekkoukan graduates nevertheless. Every afternoon she would exit her office and take an hour-long break. Even though she thought it was meager, it _had_ to be better than the breaks that S.E.E.S. field soldiers received, including her old dorm mates.

Junpei was somewhere in Central America, scheduled to arrive back in Japan today. His mission was to investigate the truth behind a myth of an ancient lost treasure of cursed Aztec gold. Supposedly, it was a success, but with Junpei, she never knew.

Akihiko was conducting a raid in Transylvania as she sat there. Local ParaPols had requested S.E.E.S. to intervene with the vampire situation over there, and in turn, Mitsuru enlisted the aid of the Romanian military to raid a Transylvanian village to kill one of the vampires there.

As for the rest of her old friends? Well, Yukari and Minato were still missing (much to the frustration of Fuuka and the entire S.E.E.S. spy agency), Ken was currently giving his valedictorians' speech at Gekkoukan, and the rest of them were somewhere within this facility. Somewhere. Mitsuru never kept tabs on the whereabouts of her friends.

When the elevator to the lounge 'dinged' and Mitsuru saw one of her aides come out of it, accompanied by Fuuka, she motioned to excuse herself from the area and head over to the rather small, nervous looking boy. Barely even old enough to serve in S.E.E.S., he had chosen a job at the civil branch rather than the military.

"Mrs. Sanada, ma'am!" the boy saluted, prompting Mitsuru to salute back, albeit rather lazily.

"Yes? What is it?" Mitsuru asked.

"Well, I...er...it's just that..."

"This is exactly why I came along," Fuuka said, putting her hand out in front of the boy's mouth to stop him from speaking and coming closer to Mitsuru so she could speak in a hushed voice.

"Mitsuru...you should come with us..." Fuuka whispered, prompting Mitsuru to look back at her friends in the lounge.

"Why Fuuka? Anything you can tell me in private you can say right here, unless of course it's-"

"It's classified information. In fact, the boy was only about to tell you a portion of the story."

"Classified, huh? _Fun._" Mitsuru remarked, taking off her glasses and rubbing the space in between her eyes with a few of her fingers. Nowadays she didn't have much to speak to Fuuka about other than mission briefings and classified information. Neither of which was much fun. Granted, being the commander of a major ParaPol wasn't much fun, either, but it was still a hell of a lot better than having to sit through one of Fuuka's intelligence presentations.

Fuuka motioned to the elevator, but stuck her palm out when the aide tried to enter.

"I'm sorry, you'll have to catch the next one. You understand, right?" Fuuka asked, ushering Mitsuru into the elevator and hurrying in herself, quickly pushing the 'close' button. The stunned aide kept looking at the two women through the gap in the doors until it finally closed, offering Fuuka complete and total privacy between the two of them.

"Okay, Fuuka. What's this new 'classified information', because we all well know that there isn't much in the ParaPol community.

Fuuka sighed and pulled out a pack of gum, offering Mitsuru a piece.

"Want some? It's mint flavored."

"Geez, everyone has their own vice in this world," Mitsuru said, slapping her head and looking earnestly at Fuuka. "Fuuka, I know you didn't come to see me just to offer me a pack of gum."

"It's about Akihiko," she said unremorsefully, popping another stick of gum into her mouth. Mitsuru was silent at first, but quickly jumped on those three words.

"Wait, what do you mean 'it's about Akihiko'? Did something happen to him!? What-" she said in a panic, forcing Fuuka to raise her hand up to Mitsuru mouth and offer her some gum again.

"No I don't want your damn gum! What the hell happened!?" Mitsuru shouted, forcing Fuuka to put the gum back in her pocket and quickly explain to Mitsuru exactly what she didn't want to hear.

"I used one of our surveillance satellites to make a quick pass over Transylvania today. I thought I might to an after-battle damage assessment upon that raid that Akihiko was scheduled to complete and report in on."

"Yes, I know. I authorized the entire operation. I took _every_ safeguard there was to protect Akihiko! Now _what happened_."

"Apparently, there weren't enough safeguards in place. I have the photographs in my office. They're awaiting analysis, but preliminary results don't look good...we found the wreckage of two helicopters and the bodies of twenty soldiers. Some of the soldiers were so badly disfigured that we couldn't tell if they were ours or not, but I counted at _least_ fifteen casualties...both helicopters were ours. Mitsuru, I'm sorry," Fuuka said, placing her hand on Mitsuru's shoulder.

Mitsuru was proud of the uniform she wore. She was proud of her crimson slacks with vertical silver stripes down each pant leg. She was proud of the pure silver top, with its crimson-colored breast area. She was proud of the numerous awards that hung from her chest. She was proud of the single black star that anointed each shoulder, signifying her rank as S.E.E.S. Supreme Commander. But what she was most proud of this uniform was not of her own design. She hadn't done anything to earn it, in fact, she didn't even believe she deserved it.

It was the "SANADA" name-tag that adorned her breast, just above her service ribbons.

Mitsuru didn't cry. She couldn't cry. She was too _shocked_ to cry, before Fuuka spoke up again.

"There _is_ some good news however...one of the helicopters didn't appear to be shot down. In fact, the wreckage is relatively intact. What's more, there's evidence of human activity around the helicopter crash site indicating survivor activity."

"Or it could be some poor villagers pillaging our technology to sell it to the Russians. Fuuka, I want to believe, I do, but..."

"But that's just it, Mitsuru! The crash site is in a valley in the Transylvanian Highlands that is so remote that it would take a helicopter just to reach there! Even though it would only be a five minute helicopter ride from the village where the raid took place, it's altitude prevents access by nothing but helicopter – or an Everest-class mountain climber," Fuuka said, blowing a bubble in her gum. Mitsuru quickly popped it with her finger.

"So, what are the chances of Akihiko's survival?" Mitsuru asked, still trying to take the gravity of the situation in.

"Right now, the odds are somewhere around thirty percent, but my team and I can have enhanced results within the hour!"

"Do it. I want a report on my desk as soon as it's done."

"Your desk? Mitsuru, don't you think it would be better if we relayed the information straight to Outpost Chernobyl?"

"No Fuuka. We don't leave our men behind. And by we, I mean _me_. I'll be mounting the search and rescue effort myself if I have to. Thirty percent is still actionable."

"Actionable, but not recommended," Fuuka said, just as the elevator 'dinged' to bring them to the administrative levels.

"We'll see about that later. Remember: results on my desk."

"Got it, Mitsuru," Fuuka replied, punching in the elevator code for the intelligence floors. As soon as the elevator doors closed, Fuuka brought her PDA out of her pocket and put another stick of gum in her mouth.

"Computer: find image results for individuals Takeba Yukari and Arisato Minato."

"_Searching...Found. Total imagery of three-thousand-seven-hundred-forty-two individuals registered in database matching facial profile. Further rendering?"_

While it was true that every member of S.E.E.S. carried their own personal PDA linked up to the S.E.E.S. data network, Fuuka's was different. With a little help from Aigis, she was able to carry an entire spy agency in the palm of her hand, something that would prove to be quite useful now.

"Computer: narrow search to eastern hemisphere. Use iris color recognition and contact differentiation."

"_Searching...Found. Total imagery of nine-hundred-nineteen individuals."_

"Computer: narrow search to eastern hemisphere, north of the equator. Use nasal bone recognition as well as national ID database."

_'Searching...Found. Total imagery of two individuals last reported seen on the island of Luzon, Republic of the Philippines. Report is currently: five hours old."_

"Bingo. Computer: search the island for spiritual emission anomalies."

"_Searching...Found. Two hot spots of spiritual emission detected at Grid Alpha, Sub-Grid Gamma, Sector Kappa, Ward Eleven, Section Nine. Civilian name is Manila International Airport."_

"At long last...I've found you two...now, to find where you're going. Computer: Search civilian database for flight logs containing the passenger data of those two individuals."

"_Searching...Found. Individuals Takeba Yukari and Arisato Minato are both outbound from Manila International Airport to Bucharest International Airport. Estimated time of arrival in the Republic of Romania: nineteen hours."_

"Romania, huh? Could it be that you two are after the same goal? Well, we'll just have to see. Computer: contact Outpost Chernobyl and order the deployment of an S.E.V. To _detain_ those two individuals upon landing in Bucharest."

"_Yes, Officer Yamagishi."_

"So, almost a year and a half in hiding, those two are finally coming out, huh? They've got a lot to explain..."


	3. And It Is So

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter II: And It Is So**

"And in my last three years here, it has been an _honor_ to attend this school alongside you all. It has been an _honor_ to have known you all, and I hope that the bonds we have created in our time here will create unity that will last for years to come. Thank you, and goodbye."

Clapping ensued afterwards from the countless students gathered here in the auditorium of Gekkoukan High School, where Class of 2017 valedictorian had just finished giving his farewell speech. The school principal, the same old, round man from Mitsuru's time, was now up on the podium giving his regards to the graduating class.

It wasn't long, however, before he ended, and the Class of 2017 was liberated from school, free to live their lives as they saw fit.

"So, what're you doing Misaki? Any plans after high school?"

"Oh, nothing much. I've got this friend up in Hokkaido, he says there's a really good IT market up there right about now."

Misaki, a beautiful girl who was relatively tall, with long black hair and green eyes, was walking down the main entranceway to Gekkoukan alongside her boyfriend. They walked arm in arm down the stone walkway, passing by many enthusiastic and happy students along the way. Many of the boys were playing on the grass or chasing each other, laughing. Many others were walking calmly with their friends, telling jokes and reminiscing about the last few years.

"So what about you, Ken? What's _your_ dream?" Misaki asked, bringing herself closer to the man she loved.

"Me? I already have a job, it's in the south. On Yakushima Island, actually."

"_Yakushima_!? Lucky!" she said. The two of them continued walking towards the gate, preparing to turn right so that Ken could take Misaki home, before he felt a hand on his shoulder, gripping it tightly.

"Hey! What gi-"

"Ken, we need to talk."

There was a limo parked by the gate. In the front seat was Chairman Tanaka. Fuuka was leaning against the wall, reading a report off of her PDA, while the figure that had grabbed him was probably the most recognizable woman he'd ever meet in his life. Mitsuru Sanada.

"Mitsuru? What's-"

"Shut up and get in the car, Ken. Good day," Mitsuru said, nodding to Ken's girlfriend before yanking Ken away from her, motioning for Fuuka to open the door to the rear compartment so that they could all get in.

"Seriously, what gives? I was gonna' come back to work on Monday! If you wanted me back so bad, why didn't you just send me a text message or something!?" Ken said loudly when Mitsuru literally threw him into the back of the limo. He hit his head of the floor, blacking out his vision for a few moments before he was able to blink a little and look around him.

Inside the limo were already Shinjiro, Aigis, and Junpei. Mitsuru and Fuuka got into the car and closed the door after them.

"What the _hell_ were you thinking! Divulging your work information to a non-ParaPol citizen!? Do you know how severely our security could be compromised by your actions!?" Mitsuru yelled as they got in. The volume of her shouting forced the driver to begin driving away from the school.

"Relax Ken, she's just pissed off because Aki's gone and done something stupid again. That and it's her time of month," Shinji said coolly and without much regard for the feelings of anyone else in the limo.

"Shinji! That wasn't very compassionate!" Fuuka yelled, forcing Shinji to lean forward in his seat and look at Fuuka angrily.

"Compassion this! Compassion that! When the hell with you learn damn it!?" he shouted at Fuuka, forcing Junpei to intervene, albeit not as loudly as everyone else.

"Hey, man. He's her husband, you really should-"

"Shut the hell up, _family man_. I still can't believe Chidori fell for you!" Shinji yelled, taking Junpei by surprise.

"Leave her out of this! And what the hell is that supposed to mean!?"

"You know damn well what it means!"

"You want to pick a fight!? Huh? Do you, you pathetic piece of trash! There's a _reason_ your not deployed overseas! It's because you're unreliable, unskilled, and overly-"

Instantly, Shinji punched Junpei in the jaw. Had it not been for the driver's sudden stop at a red light, Junpei would have received a second punch to the left side of his face.

"Enough of this! What has happened to us in the years since that Incident...why have we grown so distant?" Aigis said loudly. She didn't yell. She didn't want to be a part of this farce.

"You think you can _understand_ us, Aigis, is that-"

"Hey!" this time, the yell didn't come from their side of the limo, but from the front. Chairman Tanaka had opened the window separating the two sections and was now pointing a small revolver at them all.

"The darts in this gun have enough tranq in them to knock out an elephant. I don't want to have to use them on members of S.E.E.S. _Especially_ not you guys. Now cut the crap and tell Ken the mission already!"

After a few moments of Tanaka pointing the gun at them and the various founding members of S.E.E.S. (what was left of them, anyway) growling at each other, Mitsuru regained her regal composure and told Ken to sit down in a chair.

"As you know, Akihiko was on a mission in Transylvania commanding Rome's S.E.V. To capture a known vampire."

"I know. I gathered the actionable intelligence for that operation and I gave it to Fuuka for analysis," Ken said. He was different now, much taller, almost too tall to sit up straight within the limo. He had grown his hair out, too, to resemble Minato's.

"Akihiko...never made it back to Rome. In fact, nobody has heard from him or his squad for the past forty-eight hours. Fuuka," Mitsuru motioned her hand towards Fuuka, who pulled out a Manila folder from a collapsible compartment in the limo's door, taking out a few high-resolution photographs and handing them to Ken.

"These are photographs of the village Akihiko was raiding. As you can see, there is clear evidence that two S.E.E.S. helicopters have crashed in that area. Human activity near one of the helicopters makes us believe that Akihiko is still alive...and there's more. I did a little snooping around and discovered that Minato and Yukari are coming out of hiding. They should already be in Romania by now, detained by one of our S.E.V.'s"

"Detained? Why?" Ken asked as he perused through the photos. "And geez, was Akihiko's team equipped with live ammo, because some of these guys look-"

"That _is_ Akihiko's team," Fuuka deadpanned, pulling out her PDA and taking advantage of Ken's rapid shock.

"Anyway, we've decided to detain the two of them because we don't know what their true intentions are."

"But they're our _friends_! We've known them for years!" Ken pleaded, handing the photographs back to Fuuka, he couldn't handle the carnage in them anymore.

"Ken, we've got to look at the complete situation, here. Right now, Minato and Yukari pose a security threat to S.E.E.S., until they've been properly established as a non-threatening entity, we-" Mitsuru tried to explain, but was cut off by Ken.

"_Wow_. You all sound as if you've sold your souls. Did nothing matter to any of you? Tartarus? The Lake of Fire? Have you all forgotten everything? All that they did?"

"Maybe when you're older, you'll-"

"Mitsuru, I _am_ older. But I still value my friends, I hope they still think the same way."

"Pft. Knowing those two fools, they probably do," Shinjiro remarked, his fist starting to swell from punching Junpei in the jaw.

"I wonder if they have any kids by now? Sure would be interesting, huh?" Junpei said. Out of them all, Junpei was the only one who was not a S.E.E.S. Officer. He'd had much more skill in the search once they arrived in Transylvania.

"Indeed it would be. So, Ken. Seeing as you have no choice in the matter, you'll be coming along with us to Transylvania on a search and rescue mission," Mitsuru said, bowing her head ever so slightly. "Seriously, I appreciate you all for coming along...even _you_ Shinjiro."

"Whatever. I'm doing this for Aki's sake. What's the plan, anyway?"

"We'll be leaving for Transylvania in a few hours, until we arrive in-country though, there's not much we can do. Only persona-users can detect another persona-users spiritual emission, so we'll just have to wait and see."


	4. Knightmare in Shining Armor

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter III: Knightmare in Shining Armor**

_Minato was standing on a tall platform, raised by some unknown magic. In front of him was the silhouette of the man who appeared in his dreams. Always the same man: a pale figure wearing a cape, always blocking his face by with either his cape or the darkness surrounding them._

_From below, Minato could see the White Wolf of the World Arcanum attack this man, before it hit an energy barrier and the wolf was violently kicked into the abyss below once again._

"_Impossible! How could you have survived that!?" Minato found himself shouting at the man, who finally lowered his cape to reveal his face._

_Small eyes, from which the deep red of his iris could be seen. Skin so pale that one could only imagine what type of demon this monster was. And a mouth bearing several fangs finally began to speak._

"_Why should I tell the man I am about to kill? Die!"_

_The mysterious man leapt from his platform into the abyss, forcing a gust of air to push Minato down towards the earth below._

Minato woke up, shivering, with his head against Yukari's shoulder. Seemingly, he was on an airplane.

"What's wrong, Minato-kun?" Yukari asked, slightly sleepy herself.

"_Attention passengers, we will be landing soon at Bucharest International Airport. Please put your seats and trays in their upright positions. Thank You."_ a flight attendant announced, prompting much annoyance within the cabin of the airplane.

"It's nothing Yukari...absolutely nothing," Minato said, sitting upright and rubbing his neck. A few hours of leaning on Yukari's shoulder had given him one really big, really annoying neck pain. He looked outside of his window, at the city below: Bucharest, capital of Romania, the country they would go to find their answers, and their friends.

The plane touched down on the runway, creating a giant skid as it did so. Slowing down and heading down the runway to taxi, the pilot found it quite easy to maneuver the aircraft in early morning hours, when take-offs and landings were at a minimum.

It only took them twenty minutes to reach the gate, during which Minato drifted in and out of consciousness. He didn't want to fully lose himself in sleep. That man, that _demon_, was too much for him to bear sometimes. What was worse, was that the dreams kept getting more...prophetic. He could _feel_ them. It was almost as if the man in his dreams was controlling them. That kept him from dreaming – or at least wanting to dream.

When the plane docked at the terminal, Yukari punched Minato lightly in the arm to wake him up. As soon as the flight attendants made it clear that it was safe to leave the cabin, Yukari, who was sitting in the isle seat, made it a priority to pick up her near-undead boyfriend and carry him to the nearest exit as soon as possible. They didn't bring any luggage, so they didn't have to worry about baggage claim. They would just need to leave the airport and all would be fine.

At least in theory.

As soon as they walked out of the terminal (or to be more precise, Yukari carried Minato out of the terminal), her lack of understanding for the Romanian language put her prospects of finding a cab moderately low. Thankfully, cab drivers all over the world tended to be greedy thugs when handling foreigners at an airport, and a taxi quickly pulled up to them.

Pushing Minato's semi-conscious form into the car, Yukari quickly closed the door and asked for the driver to take her to Brasov: a Transylvanian city in the Carpathian Mountains where Minato had intercepted a radio transmission from S.E.E.S.

Granted, they had been "shadowing" S.E.E.S. for almost a year and a half now, but this radio communication was odd. It wasn't encrypted, or at least not in the manner Fuuka usually took to protect the S.E.E.S. Network.

The driver, recognizing the Asian appearance of his two passengers, held up five fingers and pointed at the first two digits on his clock.

"_Great_, five hours of driving, I really hope you can get a good sleep, Minato..." Yukari said, slightly turning her head to the side to look out the window. She could never sleep in a moving vehicle and knew she would be dead tired at the end of their journey. Hopefully Minato could act like her knight in shining armor and carry her up the mountains? Maybe.

_Minato was sitting in a large void, completely featureless and black, before several female voices could be heard around him. He didn't know where they came from, nor did he recognize who they were, but apparently, they knew him._

"_You have failed us. You have failed yourself."_

"_To think of _You_ as a Messiah!? Hah!"_

"_How disappointing. You disappoint, Mr. Arisato, you disappoint. Maybe your next of kin can take over?"_

"_Seriously, just stop trying right now, you'd do yourself a favor..."_

_The female voices began to dissipate, leaving in their midst a trail of laughter, before Minato was teleported to another realm. Another, more terrifying realm. The sky was green and lit up with lightning, while the ground was desolate and covered in small pools of blood. Next to the remains of a charred house stood an old man holding a cane. He had a tiny hunched back and wore a black suit, but he never turned around to face Minato._

"_Boy...I am truly disappointed. Truly I thought you would learn..." the old man said in a sad voice._

"_Who are you!?" Minato found himself saying angrily. He didn't want to be angry at this man. He didn't want to shout, but somehow he couldn't help it. He couldn't control himself._

"_You have lost the Power of Friendship. You have _all_ lost it. This was a beautiful world, but it was never meant to be..."_

"_What the hell are you _talking_ about, old man!?" Minato shouted. Minato was angry, forced into hatred against his will. He ran up to the man, grabbing him by the collar and forcing the man around to face him._

_Why was he doing this? His mind cried out in pain at the sight of his body's disobedience. He wanted this to _end_._

_The old man's nose was long enough to poke Minato in the chest, even though they were still a few inches apart._

"_Wait...I know you..."_

"Igor!" Minato shouted, jolting up from Yukari lap and hitting the ceiling of the cab. The cab driver said something unintelligible in his language, while Yukari eased Minato's head back into her lap and stroked his hair, even as Minato's hands were preoccupied with the large bump on his head.

"Another one of those dreams, huh?" Yukari asked sleepily. The color of her hair against the window contrasted sharply with the green and gray of the Romanian countryside. In the distance, they could see the Carpathian Mountains, imposing their monolithic visage over the whole region.

"Hey Yukari?" Minato asked, sitting up and looking out of her window, towards the mountains.

"Hm? What is it Minato?" Yukari asked, her eyes were drooping and she was falling asleep fast.

"Do you remember that time, six years ago, when you used a garudyne spell to prevent us from hitting the ground and killing ourselves?"

"Yeah, Chidori helped too. Why?"

"Do you think you can use a garudyne spell to lift us up into those mountains?" he asked, , pointing at the tall peaks in the distance. Yukari glanced over at them before looking at Minato uninterestingly.

"You're joking, right? I can'-"

"Do you have the money to pay for this _five hour_ cab fare?" he asked, reaching into his pockets to reveal nothing. "Because I don't,"

Good point," she remarked, checking her own pants for any money. "But how are we going to get out of here?"

"Leave it to me," Minato said, smiling, before crouching down in his seat so that the driver wouldn't be able to see him in the rear view mirror. From her point of view, she could see Minato reaching into his jacket, before taking out his evoker.

"Oh no" was all Yukari was able to let out before Minato raised it to his head and pulled the trigger, summoning Orpheus just above the roof of the car, Minato used an agi attack on one of the tires, lighting it on fire for a few moments before forcing it to completely give out.

Meanwhile, inside the cab, the driver was surprised at having one of his tires blow out in the quaint and quiet countryside. Struggling to keep his car from veering off the road and seeing sparks fly across the road from his rear view mirror, he took his foot off the gas pedal and slowly rolled to a stop. At the last second, he veered to the right side of the road so as to avoid blocking the main highway.

Getting out of the car to inspect his destroyed tire, the driver was too busy to notice the large Persona hovering overhead, just before it disintegrated and merged into Minato's soul once again.

"Great, now what do we do?' Yukari asked, turning her head to the left towards Minato, only to find his car door open. She turned her head right towards a large expanse of farmland covering the land between the highway and the mountain and found him running in the low-lying crops towards the mountain.

"Oh...wonderful," Yukari said, quickly opening her own door and chasing after Minato. The driver, who had not noticed Minato get out of the car, most certainly noticed Yukari chase after him, considering he was only a few feet away when she opened the door.

"Minato! Wait!" she shouted, but Minato couldn't hear her, he was too focused on running towards those damn mountains.

When she heard a loud "crack" nearby and saw a piece of cabbage explode next to her, she looked back and saw the cab driver chasing her, a pistol in hand, shouting something in his native tongue that she would never be able to understand, even _with_ a persona.

Digging into her pink cardigan, she pulled out her evoker and brought it to her head while she was running.

"Isis!" she yelled as she pulled the trigger. Instantly, a bullet that was meant to hit her was deflected by her Persona. It still hurt, but her persona could take a bullet wound, _she_ couldn't.

"Isis. Garudyne. Now!"

Instantly, the woman was swept off her feet by a gust of wind comparable to a tornado. The only difference was, she could control it the wind to her liking, Mother Nature couldn't.

"Minato!" she shouted, hoping she would catch a glimpse of his face before she plucked him from the ground. To her amusement, he did just that, looking backwards to see Yukari floating atop a massive gust of wind, picking Minato up with no problem. Had it been anyone else but Yukari controlling that wind, Minato wasn't sure whether or not he would faint or hope that Orpheus could use an agidyne counter-attack in time.

She scooped him up, the look on his face was of pure amazement and surprise.

"You've gotten better at this!" Minato said against the howling wind when he had calmed down, noticing how fast they were going.

"No. It's just a _lot_ easier to carry two people than ten with this!" she answered back. "So why are we going to the mountains? I thought the radio transmission came from Brasov?"

"It did! I picked up the radio transmission from Brasov, but when Yakushima send back a reply, they directed it at the mountains!"

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner!?" Yukari asked, annoyed that Minato would hold out on such a vital detail.

"Because the source of the original transmission came from Brasov, I figured it should only be the natural place to go. But when I saw those mountains, I knew that's where we should be looking!"

"Great. That's great...but how did you know?"

"Because why else would S.E.E.S. direct its transmissions back at these god-forsaken mountains. There's obviously something going on over – whoa..." Minato stopped mid-sentence, staring out at the gorge in front of them. Yukari saw it too. A sight both beautiful and absolutely terrifying at the same time.

In the valley below them were dozens of helicopters of the Romanian Army flying in formation, some of them – the larger ones, were spewing out some sort of blue mist over the area. Thankfully for the both of them, they were too high up to be noticed by the pilots, but as they passed the helicopters below them, Minato spoke up again.

"You see that! That's what I'm talking about! There's got to be something here that -"

"Minato, look!" Yukari said, interrupting Minato, pointing down towards the ground. Down below, in a small, craggy valley that was obviously a subsidiary of the larger one they were hovering over, was a faint blue glow.

"What do you think's down there!?" Minato asked as Yukari slowed down and ascended a little so they could get a better view.

"I don't know, shall we go find out?" Yukari asked. She didn't need to know Minato's answer, since she was controlling the wind (or rather, Isis was), she didn't need Minato's permission to send the both of them flying at a rather dangerous speed towards the crash site. She would've expected Minato to get scared or anxious as they shot through the air towards the rock face. Alas, she was disappointed when Minato looked over at her with a calm expression on his face. It wasn't anxiety that he was experiencing. It was enthusiasm.

"Set us down, Yukari," Minato asked as they got closer and closer to the rift where the glow was emanating.

"Oh – oh my God!"


	5. Our Mutual Friend

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any character within. They belong to Atlus.

Author's Note: Sorry. I'm a bit of an aviation freak and I have a tendency to describe aircraft a lot, even in real world conversation. I'll try my best to keep helicopter names and designations at a minimum to avoid becoming too nerdy and/or militaristic. This _is_ a Persona 3 fanfic after all.

**Chapter IV: Our Mutual Friend**

"Damn you're good, augh – nevermind. Still in pain..."

"Be quiet, you're alive, aren't you?" Akihiko said, putting his evoker back in its holster.

"So is that it? I thought you said you were one of the best healers we had?"

"I am. Until I have to save two people plus myself from near-death. I'm actually amazed I had enough energy to save your lives."

"Yeah, well when we get back I'll buy ya' a beer...that is, _if_ we get back."

Akihiko had stayed awake for the past forty-eight hours performing healing spells on both pilots and himself. Quite frankly, he was exhausted.

"Take over watch for me, will ya'? I'm taking a break," Akihiko said, throwing his S.E.E.S. service pistol at the pilot, whose helmet had been lost in the crash. He had a large scar over the left side of his face and seemed to be in his mid-thirties. What such an old geezer was doing in S.E.E.S. was anyone's guess. So long as he didn't slip up on watch, though, Akihiko didn't mind.

"Yeah, sure, if I can even _walk_, ah crud," the pilot said, picking up Akihiko's pistol off of the ground and getting up slowly, looking over at his unconscious co-pilot: a kid barely out of high school.

"Dang kid, could've picked a safer line of work," the pilot said to his unconcscious buddy. What happened two days ago was forgotten, or at least, by the world. The sky was blue and pure. Aside from the wreckage of their crimson and silver Chinook helicopter lying a few meters away from them, the scenery coupled with the helicopter engines made for a beautiful sight.

Helicopter engines?

"What in the hell?" the pilot asked himself, looking upward towards the sky. As the roar of the helicopters grew louder and louder, he couldn't help but feel as if they were deliberately searching for them.

Feeling turned to reality as he saw a large IAR 330 Puma helicopter pass by, spraying a blue mist out of its tail. On its side was the emblem of the Romanian Army.

"Holy sh-"

"Get down, you fool!" Akihiko shouted, tackling the pilot down onto the ground.

"I thought _you_ were sleeping!"

"Yeah, well, it's kind of hard to sleep when a battalion of helicopters are weaving through a canyon right next to you!"

"What do you mean a battalion!?" the pilot shouted. Akihiko pointed in the direction of the passing Romanian Puma helicopter, forcing the pilot to look closer. Indeed, in the distance we several other helicopters, each spraying out the same blue mist. Overhead, UH-60 Black Hawks could be seen, slowly tailing their larger counterparts .

"What the hell..."

"They're looking for us. They could be good guys, most likely they're bad. So stay down, damn it!"

Akihiko put his hand over the pilot's mouth to prevent him from shouting. Not that he would, anyway. Before he was recruited into S.E.E.S., he served as a helicopter pilot for the JASDF. The two of them looked on as the helicopters passed by, spraying their blue mist all over the valley. They eventually left the valley, their rotors still audible but otherwise not visible.

Akihiko removed his hand from the pilots mouth and rubbed it on his pants. Apparently, while the pilot _could_ control his speech. He _couldn't_ control his salivary glands.

"Aw, geez. That's disgusting!"

"Hey, I can't control my-" the pilot was about to finish that sentence, getting out of his prone position on the ground in order to face Akihiko. What he saw was truly more startling than simply having someone else's spit on your hand.

"What? _Please_, finish that sentence," Akihiko said, extremely annoyed due to lack of sleep and their current circumstances.

"Hey...uh...your name's Akihiko, right? Akihiko Sanada?" the pilot asked, staring at Akihiko for a duration that slightly disturbed him.

"Why?"

"Because I want to tell S.E.E.S. the name of the guy that's _glowing_."

"What are you talking abo-" Akihiko asked, looking down at himself so as to prove the pilot wrong. Unfortunately, Akihiko was beginning to glow in a mysterious blue light that grew in intensity over his body with each passing second. The light, seemingly emanating from his skin, even began to shine through his clothes.

"What the hell is this!?" Akihiko said aloud, before he heard the voice of a female scream through the air.

"Akihiko! Oh my God, is that you!" he heard, looking for the source of the disturbance. He looked everywhere over the horizon, directing the pilot to do the same. They inspected the area over the cliff face a few meters away. Hell, they even looked in their own helicopter, before a male voice accompanied the female voice in unison in calling out his name.

"Akihiko! Look up!" they both shouted, forcing the S.E.E.S. Commander and his pilot to tilt their heads skyward. What they saw astounded them. Seemingly floating in mid-air were two people: a woman with long, reddish-brown hair and dressed in jeans and a pink cardigan; and a man with blue hair that covered his face. He wore a simple S.E.E.S. civilian uniform: jeans and a white T-shirt.

"Holy Hell...I don't...is that...Minato!? Yukari!? Are you two really there!?" He shouted at them as they began descending in the air.

"You can see them too, right?" Akihiko asked his pilot, noticing that he was nodding his head through his peripheral vision. "Good, so I'm _not_ crazy..."

"Who would've thought we'd find you out here!?" Yukari shouted as she held Minato's hand down towards the ground. Eventually, the wind near Akihiko grew in strength, until he finally noticed that it was Yukari's power over wind that was allowing her to levitate. The wind stopped just as the two of them were about a meter off of the ground, allowing them to land safely and relatively close to Akihiko.

"I don't believe it...you two..._you're _the rescue party!?" Akihiko asked, shocked.

"Rescue? What the – what do you mean?" Minato asked, forcing Akihiko and his pilot to point their fingers at the unconscious co-pilot and the wreckage of their S.E.E.S. Chinook.

"Oh." was all that was said by both Minato and Yukari when they saw the mangled remains of the helicopter.

"_Yeah_, I don't know how you managed to miss _that_ from the air," Akihiko said.

"Hey, don't get smarmy. And besides, we were kind of focused on that _blue glow_ of yours," Minato said, pointing at Akihiko himself, who was still glowing a nice, bright fluorescent blue. "And we didn't come here to rescue you, by the way," he added.

"_What_? What do you mean? Wait...don't tell me...you two are still on the run from S.E.E.S., aren't you?" Akihiko asked, forcing Yukari to nod her head and answer him to his face.

"We didn't come here to rescue you Akihiko. Minato and I left S.E.E.S. to start our lives over, _together_...what we didn't count on was the...interruptions," she said. She tried to go on, but tilted her head away from the rest of them towards the cliffs. Minato began talking from there.

"Our personas manifested themselves a week after we left and almost tried to kill us. At the time, we didn't know what to think of it, but-"

"Wait! Your personas tried to _kill you_!?" the pilot asked in shock, "I thought you guys were supposed to have complete control over those monstrosities!"

"_We_ thought so, too. Yukari used her experience as S.E.E.S. Medical Officer to figure out what was wrong with us: Persona Apoptosis. We weren't channeling any more spiritual energy to our personas, and, with them being a "mirror entity" of our souls..."

"I see...it was their method of conveying that they needed to survive," the pilot said, forcing Minato to nod his head in the negative.

"No. It was a message to tell us that _we_ needed to survive. We who hold the power of the persona, that is both our gift and our curse. For the rest of our lives, we must continually use our personas to fight, or risk death," Minato said in a somber tone. Akihiko didn't seem fazed, considering he was regularly using his persona in a healthy order of time.

"That still doesn't explain why you two are here in the middle of the Carpathians," Akihiko remarked, holding on arm across his chest and the other supporting his hand on his chin.

"Well...about that. We didn't want to go back to S.E.E.S. We wanted to be free. But we realized that in order to survive...in order to _truly live_, we had to engage in supernatural activities, so..."

"What he's _trying_ to say is: we started our _own_ ParaPol and have been tracking down major threats around the world before any major ParaPols could get to them. We tend to be more..._forgiving_ to the local population than any given ParaPol, including _yours_, Akihiko," Yukari said, finishing what Minato was trying to say and gaining a glare from both Akihiko and his pilot.

"We've also been following the activities of S.E.E.S. closely and discovered that there was major activity going on in this region. When Minato hacked into your network, he found out that there were many communiques between here and Yakushima. Something went down here, Akihiko. What was it?" she demanded forcefully, pointing at the various objects around her while twirling around to face them all.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that with you, Yukari. You and I both know that Mitsuru-"

"Damn it, Akihiko! That's why we _left_! You can't blindly follow someone else's orders! You have to think for yourself! You have to _live_ for yourself! Now what happened here?" Yukari pleaded with Akihiko, but all he did was fold his arms. He didn't reply, he didn't even make a comment on her brief philosophical tirade. Right about now, she _hated_ the red armband on his left arm. Hated all that it symbolized, but...was the blue glow from Akihiko getting brighter?

"Uh, Yukari?" Akihiko said, unfolding his arms and keeping them at his sides. Yukari seemed to note that his facial expression changed from one of indifference to one of mild amazement.

"What? Finally going to divulge the information we want to know?" she asked, smirking at Akihiko, before the pilot spoke up instead of him.

"No, we were just wondering why _you guys_ are glowing, too," the pilot said, pointing at the faint glow of Yukari's skin underneath her clothes. Minato, too, was apparently not immune to the blue glow that had consumed the three friends.

"What the _hell_ is going on here!" Akihiko said, turning around to face the cliffs, hearing the sound of helicopter blades draw closer. It wasn't as if this was a surprise. Someone was bound to find them eventually, but Akihiko wasn't prepared when he saw Yukari and Minato, and he _especially_ wasn't prepared when a Puma helicopter of the Romanian Army suddenly appeared above the cliff face, slowly turning on its horizontal axis to reveal an open side door and a large man, dressed in combat fatigues. On either side, he was flanked by members of the 1st Special Operations Battalion: The Eagles.

"_Mister_ Sanada! Welcome to my country! It is shame you have come on most...unfavorable circumstances, yes?' the man shouted from the bay of the helicopter. As it drew closer and closer, getting ever lower towards their positions on the ground, the man who had called out to Akihiko jumped from the helicopter to land with grace on the ground. Splitting his legs apart and forcing most of the energy on his right leg, which he bent, and kept the left leg straight. He reinforced his landing by holding out his fists towards the ground, before looking up at Akihiko with big, gleaming eyes.

"Have you forgotten your friend, already?" the man asked.

"C – Colonel Radic!? What...what are you doing here?" Akihiko asked, stunned.

"After we lost contact with your squad, I had a team investigate the village you attacked outside of Brasov...they never came back. However, we did manage to get some satellite photos of the region from your spy...what was her name...Yamagishi?"

"Fuuka always comes through!" Akihiko shouted, before the colonel held up his hand and continued.

"Needless to say, I knew you weren't stupid enough to get yourself _killed. _Seeing as this was the only helicopter that seemed to escape, I knew you must be here, but the question was, _where_! I assume you'll be wanting this glow off, yes?" Colonel Radic asked, but without even waiting for an answer, he pulled something out of his pocket: a small black cube, and slightly pressed on one of its sides. Instantly, the glow around Akihiko, Yukari, and Minato vanished, leaving all three of them stunned.

"It is a tracking device, courtesy of the Queens," the colonel said, a smile on his large, bearded face.

That all changed when Akihiko came up and punched him with his powerful right hook, grabbing him by the collar and forcing the special operations soldiers in the helicopter to draw their guns.

"That's nice, but _why did you fire on my men!?_" Akihiko shouted at the top of his lungs, bringing his face as closer to the colonel's as it could get. "I lost forty good men...good _kids_. _Kids_, Radic! They were barely out of-"

The colonel used his brute strength to take a hold on Akihiko's arms and throw him to the ground, before hulking over to Akihiko's body and leaning over it, his face more serious now.

"It was not I that killed your men, Mister Sanada. Indeed, my own forces were held up in Bucharest on "official protection duties."

"But-" Akihiko tried to stand up, refusing the helping hand Colonel Radic had offered him. He failed, and decided instead to lay on the ground.

"It appears that _they_ have made their move. I do not know their objectives or their motives. I only know that Bucharest has lost contact with all garrisons between here and Arad. _Something_ is happening, Mister Sanada, and my forces cannot handle it alone."

"Yeah...I saw a couple of vamps back on the assault site, along with soldiers from _your army_. I thought those men were under your command?" Akihiko said, closing his eyes and trying to relax in this mad world.

"They were. The Brasov Garrison has been overrun as well. The government is in a panic. Even though my country is within the jurisdiction of three major ParaPols...even the _Vatican_ has turned us down, Mister Sanada...what on earth could the vampires have for modern weapons? In the past thousand years, this is the first breach of our truce!"

"Surely it can't be for an Insurrection against the ParaPols. I've heard that there have been more warlock arrests in England recently," Akihiko said from the ground, putting his hand over his face.

"No...that would be too complex for them..."

"Ahem!"

"Huh?"

From the wreckage of the Chinook helicopter, Yukari cleared her throat as loudly as she could, prompting Colonel Radic's eyes to light up with excitement once again.

"Ah! That is right! These two persons had the glow as well! How do you do, my lady," Colonel Radic said, taking Yukari's hand and bowing down to kiss it, forcing Yukari into a deep red blush.

"And you, sir," he said, shaking Minato's hand so heavily that Minato himself was shaken.

"Akihiko, just who _is_ this guy?" Yukari asked, pointing her thumb at Colonel Radic, forcing Akihiko to put all of his strength into standing up so that he could explain.

"Yukari. Minato. Meet Colonel Milovan Radic, our mutual friend in the Romanian military. Colonel Radic, these are Yukari Takeba and Minato Arisato, _former_ members of my organization...now, seeing as you're all acquainted now," Akihiko said, taking a deep breath and pausing for the slightest bit of a second before continuing.

"Now that you two have heard what you never should have, I guess your original goal may be accomplished after all. Yukari. Minato. Welcome to Operation Poison Blood."


	6. Poison Blood

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter V: Poison Blood**

"Operation...Poison Blood?" Yukari asked, obviously confused.

"It's what you two came here for: the _reason_ why there's so much ParaPol activity in this region," Akihiko explained, forcing both Yukari and Minato to nod their heads in acknowledgment.

"Yes. Six years ago, we detected a disturbance in a cave complex a hundred kilometers to the north of here. We sent in a geological team to survey the area, thinking it was an act of Mother Nature," Colonel Radic explained. His pause at the end of that sentence did well enough to convey the rest of his message.

"Ever since then, military units across the country seem to have lost control of themselves. Slowly, but surely, each of our provincial garrisons losses contact with the capital...and two months ago, the vampires broke their truce with the Romanian people and nation," Colonel Radic said, forcing his eyes down upon the ground and staring at the grey color of the rock beneath him.

"It's like their flesh: cold, grey, and unforgiving..."

Akihiko took over command of the conversation from here, briefing his two friends on his mission.

"Operation Poison Blood was launched by S.E.E.S. a few weeks ago to counter this threat and keep the peace in the Transylvania Region. I _was_ raiding a village a few kilometers from here, hoping to capture a_ half-breed, _but vampires, along with subverted units of the Romanian military attacked. Colonel Radic was supposed to be supporting me on that mission, but..."

"I'm sorry, Mister Sanada, that there was nothing I could do," the colonel said, placing his hand on Akihiko's shoulder to comfort him. The force from the helicopter blades kept everyone's hair back, allowing all to see the true sadness on Akihiko's face.

"Still...forty people...there should have been something _I_ could've done..."

"It's in the past now, Akihiko. You've got to strengthen your resolve and use it to fight for the memories of your men," Yukari said, coming closer to him.

"I know that much...I know...But – on to Operation Poison Blood. We don't have adequate information about the vampires and we just lost an entire _squad_ of S.E.E.S. soldiers. Colonel, I hope you have a backup plan?" Akihiko asked, forcing the good colonel to straighten his back and put a smile on his face once again.

"Hah! Even better my friend!" he shouted, lifting his arms up towards the sky and laughing into the wind generated by the helicopter hovering overhead.

"Mister Sanada, we have _these,_" upon saying this, the colonel turned around to face the chasm a few meters away, allowing him a wonderful view of the small settlements below: the tiny traces of humanity in this particular void. For a few moments, none of the members of S.E.E.S. knew what the colonel was talking about, before he ushered them to come over to his position and view the settlements themselves.

Sure enough, from one of the national highways that sliced through the province, a dust storm was being kicked up by a _massive_ convoy.

"Are...are those..._tanks_?" Yukari asked, pointing at the convoy with a feeling of shock and awe.

"Yes. Quite necessary when our enemy controls half of my nation's military, yes?" the colonel replied, happiness visible on his face. The sun was low in the sky, setting on the horizon just beyond the convoy. In the skies were several UH-60 Black Hawks, seemingly in a patrol pattern above the area, as none of them were breaking their circular route.

"Colonel...is such a mobilization really necessary? Something like _that_ isn't a piece of information we can erase so quickly," Akihiko said, referencing to the convoy's apparent disregard for subtlety when passing through civilian areas.

"Mister Sanada...the troops you encountered a few days ago were a hodge-podge make-up from men from the Arad Garrison alongside some of my own. They are being _controlled_ by the vampires. They have lost their freedom – no, their _lives_, to protect this country and its citizens. This is the only logical choice, given the situation, yes?" the colonel asked, looking down towards the convoy in the valley below them.

Come to think of it, Akihiko had certainly be lucky to have such a smooth landing with craggy rocks behind him and a deep chasm in front of him. It was either luck or his pilots' personal skill. Considering Akihiko had a bit of a friendly rivalry with the pilot before this operation, he'd prefer it was luck that had saved him.

"Have any new attacks occurred since the raid?" Akihiko asked, turning to the colonel, whose face fell instantly.

"We don't know much about the vampires. All we do know, aside from that they consume human blood, is that they work in _packs_, not alone. Never alone. And no vampire packs have been-"

"Packs? But the village was only attacked by one vampire!" Akihiko said, remembering that soldier whose blood he had bathed in.

"_That_, Mister Sanada, is an impossibility. The only vampire clan that operates individually is that of the Dracula Clan. Not only have they been gone for the last two-hundred years, but it would take a spiritual presence of _enormous_ evil to even suggest that one should awake them. Why, I'm quite amazed you even proposed that thought, yes?"

As the sun passed over a small grove of apple trees in the distance, the seemingly endless convoy was reaching its end. From tanks to trucks. From trucks to police cars, the convoy passed the village and made on towards its journey God knows where.

"Dracula? You mean _Count_ Dracula?" Yukari asked, surprised. The colonel nodded his head in the affirmative, but scoffed at the idea.

"Do not worry, Madam...eh-"

"Arisato," Minato said, forcing a sly grin to work its way onto Akihiko's face. The colonel simply nodded his head.

"Madam Arisato, Count Dracula was sealed over two hundred years ago by a man with the Eighth Power of the Persona, much like the power Mister Sanada has. Only another person with the eighth power can unseal him, and I doubt anyone would do that! Especially such kind hearted and...well, maybe _kind hearted_ wasn't the right description," the colonel said, glancing over at Akihiko.

"Hey! What the hell is that supposed to mean!?" Akihiko said grumpily, to the amusement of Colonel Radic. Yukari nodded her head during the colonel's explanation. She _was_ a persona user herself, she didn't need to be explained the power of the Persona, _but Eighth_ Power of the Persona? Where the hell was this coming from?_. _

Minato wasn't listening, instead focusing his gaze on the Black Hawk patrol above, as well as on the IAR 330, still hovering above them, but slowly backing off so as to get into a patrol pattern alongside the other helicopters in the area.

What was going on here?

"Jokes aside, the _only_ known people in the _world_ with that power are you people. I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of having to fight a persona user," the colonel said, turning his back once again to face the small village.

"It is a wonderful sight. A wonderful thought, yes? To know that one is safe from evil, yes?"

"We're not safe from evil, yet, Colonel. Until we find out what happened at that village, we'll never be able to track down the root cause of this vampire rebellion," Akihiko replied, walking over to the colonel and looking down on the village below.

"But you _are_ right in one regard. That truly _is_ a beautiful sight," Akihiko said.

He spoke too soon.

As soon as the sun disappeared over the horizon, stopping the illumination of the world once again for a few short hours, the sky lit up once again in a bright flash of light.

But this time, it wasn't the sun. Shielding their eyes from the blast, the various members of S.E.E.S., along with Colonel Radic, looked down towards the highway. What they saw altered their definition of the word "impossible" forever.

A T-72 tank could be seen flying through the air, lazily rolling off pitch until it hit a maple tree down by the village, instantly shattering it.

"Did anyone else see that?" Akihiko asked once again. The S.E.E.S. helicopter pilot had walked up to Akihiko again and simply nodded his head in agreement and amazement.

"Good...so I'm _not_ insane," Akihiko said, just as a loud screeching sound could be heard ripping through the summer air, just before they saw another bright white flash of light and an explosion coming from a section of highway that was just out of their sight.

Actually, it was more than one explosion. From where they were standing, although they had lost sight of the convoy, they could clearly hear the cracks of gunfire and the low "thud" of tanks firing. Large explosions ripped through the air almost constantly, causing Yukari to hold onto Minato's arm while watching the spectacle.

The helicopters in the air, a total of five in all, had all stopped their circular patrol above the village and were suddenly veering off course towards the highway. One helicopter, the IAR 330 that the colonel had ridden on, barely missed the top of the crashed S.E.E.S. chopper as it swooped into the valley. The elite soldiers inside it could be seen aiming their weapons over to the right side of their helicopter, primed to shoot at their unknown target, before a police car was thrown into the air, directly into the helicopter.

Akihiko hoped to God there weren't any survivors. After an explosion like that, which shook the ground where they were standing and created an intense fireball that singed their eyebrows...it would be better to die than live through that.

The radio on Colonel Radic's shoulder lit up with chatter after the helicopter explosion. After a few seconds of confused shouting, Colonel Radic began to issue orders to his troops on the highway, speaking in a language that no member of S.E.E.S. was able to understand.

"Colonel, what's wrong!?" Akihiko asked, running up to Colonel Radic and putting his hand on the colonel's shoulder, before a blood curling scream could be heard over the radio and another flare could be seen from the highway.

The sky was indigo, turning darker every second, but each second the Earth was thrust into darkness, more lights began to appear from the highway, illuminating the horizon in brilliant orange and white.

"Mister Sanada, are you blind? Have you not control over your senses!?" the colonel shouted, pointing at the bright lights in the sky over by the highway.

"_That_ is what's wr-"

"Hit the deck!" the S.E.E.S. pilot shouted, pointing up at the sky to reveal one of the four remaining helicopters: a Romanian UH-60. It had apparently been hit by _something_, but the projectile didn't have enough energy to destroy the Black Hawk. Instead, right above them, a tail-less helicopter was plummeting through the air towards them all, forcing everyone to crouch down and at least _try_ to find cover. All but Yukari, who stayed in her spot, staring up at the wreckage of the helicopter heading towards her face. She raised her right hand up to the sky, closed her eyes, and slowly brought her evoker from its holster to her head.

And, to Minato's horror, just as the helicopter was about to smash into her face, pulverizing it into dust, Yukari pulled the trigger.


	7. The Lost, Part IV

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

Author's Note: As per my particular writing style, most of this chapter is in italics. I apologize, but there's really no other way to transition between, well...you'll find out.

**Chapter VI: The Lost (Part IV)**

_Deep below the island of Yakushima, in a small bedroom with walls lined in white wallpaper and crimson carpet floors, the shouting of a long dysfunctional couple could be heard throughout the hallway of Residential Block R-11._

"_What the hell do you mean you won't do it!?" Shinjiro shouted, picking up a glass bottle from the dresser and throwing it at the crying, teal-haired woman near the door. He was always angry when he was drunk. He was always angry when he had to take those suppressant drugs for his persona. This was the first time he'd taken the drugs and alcohol at the same time, and his mental state quickly broke down from one of annoyance and quick temperance to outright violence and aggression._

"_Shinji! Please, stop this!" a scared Fuuka shouted from her corner of the room. She had stopped the glass bottle from hitting her with her psychic powers, which could be effectively used without summoning her persona, thanks in part to advanced training she had received from Mitsuru._

_It should be properly noted that Shinjiro Aragaki and Fuuka Yamagishi were quite possibly the perfect couple during the day. Their old friends from Gekkoukan High School were even placing "weddings bets" to see who could predict the exact date they would get married._

_Of course, what their friends saw: the infatuated cooking couple who spent more time in the S.E.E.S. Cafeteria than actually doing their jobs, was only a masquerade. Aigis had altered Shinjiro's persona so that he didn't need to take the suppressant drugs anymore. She had done this over two years ago, and yet, Shinjiro still did it._

_As time wore on, Shinjiro began spending less and less time with Fuuka, and more time in the S.E.E.S. Lounge, drinking his "troubles" away. What they were, no one knew exactly. Nobody but Akihiko, who refused to divulge the information he knew to Fuuka. All he ever said to anyone was "the Lake of Fire Incident was a blessing and a curse for all of us. Shinji's just battling his inner demons right now..."_

_That was a lie. One's persona should also provide stable mental health._

_Fuuka always wanted to know more about Shinjiro, to know about his past, to know why he was keeping things from her._

_But the TV dramas Yukari used to watch were horribly different from real life. Whenever Fuuka asked about Shinjiro's past, apart from what she already knew, he would always avoid the question and then immediately drown himself in drink._

_Maybe it was his time in the Heavens? Something there that had triggered the return of some kind of painful memory. Or maybe it was her? Was she to blame for Shinjiro's addictions? _

_Tonight, however, was different. The combined psychological pressure from both the alcohol and the drugs forced Shinjiro's mind out of his control. He came into their room that night with such force that Fuuka had thought that something had gone wrong with his job as overseer of Japan's Paranormal Defense Grid._

_She was horribly wrong. He was domineering. He wanted her, not in the ways that they had lightly talked about in the S.E.E.S. kitchen. No, he wanted her body. He wanted her now and that was it, he wouldn't say anything else._

_She refused, saying that such a thing should only be undertaken by married couples._

_Enter the situation Fuuka was in right now, with a very angry Shinjiro yelling at her from across their room, his face riddled with sweat and the veins in his face were popping out._

"_All I ask for is a simple thing!? And you can't give it to me!? What the hell is wrong with you!?" he shouted._

"_Shinjiro, please! Stop this!" Fuuka shouted, just as Shinjiro ran towards her with his arms outstretched..._

Fuuka was the first to enter the S.E.E.S. MH-53 Pave Low as their chartered jet touched down in Bucharest. The crimson and silver paint on the side of the helicopter made it stand out against the white planes around them.

Outside the helicopter, the sun was setting to the west. They would be flying directly into the path of the fleeting sunlight as they would make their way to the site of the "incident".

Just outside the helicopter were two S.E.E.S. pilots from Outpost Rome: Akihiko's unit. They were chatting idly when the "delegation" from Yakushima came in. Snapping a quick salute to Mitsuru when she arrived at the helicopter, they quickly opened the doors to the cockpit and let themselves in so that they could begin startup procedures. They would find their commander – their friend, and they would bring him home.

Fuuka sat at the far left side of the rear seating row of the helicopter. To her immediate right were Mitsuru and Junpei. Directly in front of her, front left to right, was Shinjiro, Aigis, and Ken.

The two of them simply stared at each other, not doing anything else but staring into each others eyes. They did this partly because it was sentimental, partly because they had nothing better to do, and partly because they didn't want to partake in the conversation around them.

The conversation that dealt with humanity as an object. With friends as statistics. Indeed, what had they become when they had...

"_...Did what!?" Mitsuru yelled, shaking Fuuka by the shoulders, but in a slightly comforting manner. It was nice to know that Mitsuru cared about her._

_The door to their bedroom had been kicked down, and Shinjiro was being held on the ground by Aigis alongside a black android whom Aigis had spent a fair amount of time constructing._

_Fuuka was crying into Mitsuru's shoulder while Shinji was shouting unintelligible things at the two women, before Mitsuru slided Fuuka away from her and stood up to head over to Shinji. In her hand, she held a small black piece of rubber, on which was stamped a golden star._

"_You! How dare you do something like this, Shinji! I give you-"_

"_You gave me nothing! You're not even capable of giving anything! Damn it, that false sense of power you've got stuffed up in your head has got you acting crazier than I am!" he shouted back, prompting Mitsuru to slap Shinji right across the face._

This was the first time all of them had been together since Mitsuru's wedding last July. Well, most of them, anyway. _They_ were still missing, albeit found. The intense feelings of betrayal and abandonment that S.E.E.S. felt when those two left was only shadowed by the mixed feelings of contempt, annoyance, hatred, and anger that they all felt now. The probably exception being Ken and Aigis.

They had changed.

In the six years since the Lake of Fire Incident, S.E.E.S. slowly began to lose its humanity, Maybe that's why they left. Maybe that's why they were all angry right now.

As the helicopter began to take off from Bucharest International Airport, maybe that was why they belonged in the Valley of the Queens.

_Shinjiro stood in the middle of a large room, decorated with wooden panels on the walls and exquisite marble that made up the floor. It was probably one of the only rooms in S.E.E.S. headquarters where the ceiling was actually visible from the floor below, and a small set of chandeliers hung from the ceiling to light up the room with a strangely appropriate amount of light, not too bright, but not too dark._

_On the sides were two sets of wooden bleachers, in which stood several S.E.E.S. members in formal clothing. Sitting in front of Shinjiro, on a raised platform was Chairman Tanaka, in his full business suit, a clear look of annoyance on his face._

"_Shinjiro Aragaki..." Chairman Tanaka said in disappointment, looking up at him from a small list of pages in front of him._

"Tanaka_," Shinjiro replied in reciprocation, venom in his voice._

"_Disciplinary Committee Number Four-Oh-Two is now in session, twenty-third of June, Twenty-Fifteen. This probe will now-"_

"_Fuck off and send me to Hokkaido already. Anything's better than waiting around for you people to order me around like some dog!"_

The helicopter banked to the left, sending everyone who was engaged in conversation into a surprised jolt as they all squished together. Shinjiro was panting for breath, pleading for Aigis to get off of him. Fuuka wasn't that far off from pain either, as her small figure couldn't take the combined weight of Mitsuru and Junpei.

"Pilot! What the hell was that about!?" Mitsuru yelled as the pilots leveled the helicopter. He didn't need to speak, though, because outside the right side of the helicopter, Ken and Junpei gawked in amazement at the spectacle below.

Smoke was billowing from one of the highways into Brasov and Ken quickly rallied Aigis to come see, prompting her to open the side door of the helicopter to allow them a better view outside.

Down below, in the deep red and orange flames of several tanks and civilian vehicles, Aigis used her camera eyes to see within the smoke and ash.

Down below, in the hellfire, Aigis could see into the eyes of evil. A pale man. He had Ryoji's hair and Koromaru's eyes. He wore a dark overcoat and was simply standing on top of a destroyed civilian vehicle, emotionless. A blank stare on his face, his held his arms out as if to grab something, but there was nothing in front of him. Readjusting her cameras, Aigis zoomed outward to see a tank levitating in the air, just before it collapsed in on itself and was crushed into a tightly compacted steel ball.

"Oh my-" Aigis said, bringing her hands up to cover her mouth as she witnessed the carnage below.

"What is it Aigis? What do you see?" Ken asked, placing his hand on her shoulder before turned around to face Mitsuru.

"We need to get out of here, now," she said hurriedly, turning around to look down at the man again, only this time, he was gone. In his stead were three pale women, one of which had a large hole in the left side of her chest. Aigis knew this because she was staring directly at her, before bearing what appeared to be fangs and outstretching her arms towards their own helicopter.

Almost immediately, alarms and klaxons could be heard from within the cockpit. Mitsuru stood up and went over to the cockpit, just before the helicopter was sent into a death spiral.

"What's going on!?" Mitsuru shouted. Neither pilot turned around to face her, quickly pressing the various buttons and controls in front of them to try and gain control of the situation. The co-pilot answered her without taking his eyes off of his console.

"We've lost hydraulic contr – augh!" He shouted as the cockpit windshield shattered, sending glass hurtling into his eyes. The pilot, however, was saved due to the fact that he was bending over to pick up the radio headset. When the co-pilot stopped picking at his face and eventually settled down, the pilot began to panic, seeing the blood flowing from the co-pilot's body and collect on the cockpit floor.

"Brace for impact!" he shouted at Mitsuru, just before the helicopter jolted and was sent spiraling even faster.

The pilot didn't know what had hit them, but everyone who was looking outside the right side of their helicopter, however, did.

The charred remains of a UH-60 helicopter of the Romanian Army had hit the tail rotor of their MH-53, destabilizing the craft and forcing everyone inside to strap themselves in as the helicopter descended from the air in a glorious display of man's fight against the inevitable...

"_S.E.E.S. is dead," Shinji remarked, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it as he walked down a large boulevard with Akihiko. It was the winter of 2015 and no one else was in sight. They were alone in this city. Just the two of them, alone, to discuss amongst themselves the things they could not discuss locked away in that unforgiving island that had once been the vacation paradise of Yakushima._

"_Dead?" Akihiko asked, curious to what he meant by such a thing. Shinjiro offered Akihiko a cigarette, to which he declined._

"_Whatever S.E.E.S. used to be, it's not anymore. Now we decide the fate of the world alongside other old men who know nothing outside of their underground bunkers...we've lost sense of _each other_, Aki. You hear me?" he said softly, pausing along the boardwalk to look up and admire the crescent moon overhead. "There was a time...long ago, when that moon seemed like a demon to me...now, _we're_ the demons."_

"_Shinji, I know things didn't work out between you and Fuuka, but-"_

"_This has nothing to do with her!" he shouted, throwing his arms up in the air before he realized he had let his cigarette drop into the snow below, forcing him to grumble and dig into his pocket for another one._

"_You should really think about quitting," Akihiko suggested._

"_Bite me. You see, Aki? Even you are starting to feel it. We've closed ourselves to _this_," Shinjiro said, outstretching his arms towards the lights of the city around them. "This mass of spiritual energy that we see as statistics but know as Humanity. Aki...promise me you won't end up like those hard-asses at Yakushima...uh, no offense," he said, just remembering that Mitsuru, one of those "hard-asses", was also Aki's girlfriend._

_Akihiko laughed a bit, before looking his friend right in the face, "You know as well as I do that I can never be like Mitsuru...I lost your friendship once already, Shinji. I'm not going to lose it again," he said, placing his hands on Shinji's shoulder._

_The city of Iwatodai wasn't like it used to be, but when Shinji said "thanks" and the two of them continued on their walk,they noticed that Hagakure was, by some miracle, still open and in business._

"_Shinji, I see your point about S.E.E.S. becoming loose and cold...and unfriendly..."_

"_You should stop talking," Shinji said, slightly smiling through the cigarette._

"_You want to go back to where it all began?" Akihiko asked, grinning._

"_What the hell are you talking about, Aki?" Shinjiro asked, forcing Akihiko to point through the snow towards a railway station across the street._

"_Hagakure, where Mitsuru and I recruited you, and when S.E.E.S. seemed more like family than a job," Akihiko asked, before Shinjiro put his arm around Akihiko's shoulder and looked at the same railway station._

"_Sure, why the hell not? Only thing is, you're paying," Shinjiro said, taking his arm away from Akihiko and walking through the snow towards the station, followed by a confused and annoyed Akihiko. How come he always had to pay for everything?_

_No matter. Once Shinjiro got drunk and stupid enough, he would relent to paying for their meal. It didn't matter if Shinjiro never came back to Yakushima headquarters or if the two of them never saw each other again._

_What was important was the fact that theirs was a bond that couldn't be broken. A single reprieve of comfort for Akihiko in this relentless and unforgiving world._


	8. A Humble Apology

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter VII: A Humble Apology**

Sitting there, in the wind tunnel that had come out of Yukari's hand, was an extremely disfigured UH-60 helicopter. It twirled around in her hand like some sort of child's play thing, before she tossed it away from all of them towards the sky.

"Nice one, Yukari!" Minato said, coming closer and putting his hand around her waist, pulling out his evoker with his free hand. He twirled the evoker on his finger before aiming it at his head and looking at Akihiko.

"Just like old times, huh?" he asked before bringing the evoker to his side, allowing the breeze to brush past his hair and making it flutter a little in the wind. It felt good – at least better than the hell their lives had become since their "potential" was realized all those years ago.

"Heh. Only for some of us," Akihiko said, turning around and looking over towards the bright red and orange light that the flames were producing. "Yukari...Minato...you guys..."

"We did what we had to, just like Ryoji," Minato said calmly, closing his eyes and holstering his evoker. The comment about Ryoji forced Akihiko to turn around and run up towards the two of them.

"What about Ryoji!? Do you know anything about him!?" Akihiko said as he came towards Minato, not even realizing that his voice got louder with every word he spoke as he grabbed Minato's arms violently.

"We've been playing our part in this sick game...I'd expect S.E.E.S. to play its proper role, too...Akihiko...you have no idea what you guys were doing here, were you?" Minato asked.

Akihiko, stepping back from Minato, crossed his arms and looked them both in the eye, "Of course I know. We were capturing a vampire to prevent the death of innocents! This is _exactly_ how we operated back in Tartarus." Akihiko wasn't mad anymore. He wasn't betrayed, either. The feelings he felt right now were somewhere between relief, confusion, and regret.

Relief for surviving his situation as long as he did. Confusion at the sudden appearance of Minato and Yukari.

And regret for not being able to stop their departure. But he just couldn't understand their mindset right now. S.E.E.S. was fighting to protect the world from evil. Because of their sacrifices, countless lives...countless _souls_ had been saved. Why would they try to leave that?

"Akihiko...the last time that a supernatural being was captured was in 1999, by the Kirijo Group, in the city of Iwatodai..." Yukari said, coming up to her friend and standing beside him. "You can't stop this kind of power...the only thing you can do is _kill_ it. That's why we-"

After Yukari had sent the UH-60 flying, there had been a lull in the fighting. It seemed as if whatever had destroyed the convoy was done with its rampage of carnage. The only thing interrupting their conversation was the wind, the slight crackling of the flames burning in the distance, and the occasional grunt from one of the pilots. Other than that, there shouldn't have been any sounds, _especially_ not the screaming that they now heard, which pierced through the air like the helicopter Yukari had so easily thrown away.

"What is that!?" Akihiko shouted, turning around to face the glow of the flames and the massive pillar of smoke that was only now beginning to rise; apparently Yukari's garudyne blast had only momentarily stopped the destruction.

"Screams? Who can scream _that_ loud?" Yukari said, plugging her ears with her thumbs. In the distance, from the highway, a loud male voice could be heard throughout the valley in one cowardly and shameful scream of horror.

"Um...Yukari, I _might_ know a person..." Minato said, slowly walking up to her and pulling on her pink cardigan to get her full attention. "We might also need Isis's garu skills again," he said meekly, rubbing the back of his head and simultaneously pointing to the helicopter crew, Colonel Radic, as well as Akihiko.

"Might know a – Akihiko...don't tell me you called S.E.E.S. for backup?" Yukari asked, turning around and facing the rising pillar of smoke as well.

"Yeah, I did. Search teams from Athens or Chernobyl should have been here by now. I don't get why-"

"Holy crap! I don't wanna' die!" the voice shouted again, before Minato slapped his head and looked over at Yukari. The two of them stared blankly at each other for a few moments before uttering a single word.

"Junpei," they both deadpanned at each other. Akihiko, who had, until this point in time, been too preoccupied with assessing their current predicament, was stunned. Colonel Radic and the helicopter crew simply stood back, waiting for their "gifted" friends to take care of whatever had just destroyed the convoy so that they wouldn't share the same fate.

"J – Junpei!? Why the hell would they send Junpei?" he asked, a confused look forming on his face. Seconds later, however, Yukari yanked her evoker form its holster on her left thigh and she brought it up to her face to pull the trigger, instantly releasing Isis from its bonds.

"Isis! Garudyne!" she yelled before either Akihiko or Minato could raise any objections. They took off in a swirling vortex of wind in less than a second, leaving Colonel Radic back on the cliff to light a cigar while the pilot griped about his situation. The co-pilot was still unconscious.

"Hey! What – whoa!" Akihiko shouted. As the Fates would have it, this was only Akihiko's second time in the air like this, the first being six years ago. Minato remained calm, neither smile nor grimace on his face. Yukari was the same way: emotionless as she carried out the necessary task at hand.

Maybe it was the combined pressure of their duties and their persona? Or maybe it was the discipline and restraint they had developed after two years of living together? To an outside observer such as Akihiko; Minato and Yukari were the epitome of what S.E.E.S. had been – what it was _supposed_ to be. Their humanity: their needs and desires, their hopes and dreams remained the guiding force with which the two carried out their lives.

"We're coming up on the-" Yukari stopped mid-sentence when she spotted the highway and a damaged S.E.E.S. MH-53 helicopter in a death spiral above it. It was missing its tail rotor, but by some force of extreme luck, it hadn't gone into a complete nose-dive into the ground below; rather, the helicopter seemed to be spiraling downwards with its belly constantly aligned with the ground. If the pilot was good enough (or if their luck held), the inhabitants would survive without any serious injury.

But since when did S.E.E.S. ever rely on luck to do anything for them?

Yukari took her evoker to her head and called forth Isis once more.

"Isis! Garudyne!" she shouted, holding out her free hand towards the helicopter, forcing a visible green-ish gust of wind to shoot out of it at tornado speeds and catch the helicopter in mid-air. Being a virtual Master of the Wind, she was able to stabilize the helicopter even though it was, for the most part, fundamentally broken.

The shouts and screams from inside the helicopter were subsiding, partially because the helicopter had stabilized, mostly because Yukari's garu skills negated most noise coming from it.

"Great job Yukar-" Minato couldn't even finish his lovers' name before the world was thrust into darkness.

Actually, once Minato began to blink his eyes a bit, it wasn't so much darkness as it was false color. Minato reached out to Yukari, hoping to get her attention over to him, but she wouldn't move her head, even as he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. Looking over the side of the vortex Yukari had created, Minato could see that the false color extended for miles around him. Not only this, but the vortex seemed to stand still: a controlled force of nature put down by another, darker force.

He could hear nothing but silence. The small echoes that reverberated throughout his brain like thousands of insects slowly devouring his soul grew louder and louder until he was overwhelmed by an intense wall of sound. Collapsing to the "floor" of the vortex, Minato clutched his ears, trying to block out this loud, obnoxious sound.

But it was no use. It was _inside_ him, and by the time he realized it, he felt his eyes close and his consciousness drift from him.

"_Welcome back," Minato could hear an old man say. _

_He appeared to be in a car; more precisely, a limousine, as Minato could see down the deep blue aisle of the vehicle towards what appeared to be the front. Sitting in two seats with their backs to him were two individuals, and neither could be seen _

"_It has...been a while, has it not?" the old man asked again from one of the chairs in front of Minato. He felt compelled to stand up and see who it was, but his body wouldn't comply with him._

"_I...apologize for the sudden call forth but it has seemed that once again your destiny calls out to you. I am, of course, an observer."_

"_Who are you?" Minato asked, his voice cracking. Why did he feel he knew this place? Why did he feel he knew this man?_

"_I...am sure that you will understand my lack of manners but, interference is strictly forbidden until you rediscover _who you are_. Until you rediscover your _destiny_."_

"_I don't know what you're talking about," Minato said, quietly and calmly._

"_My boy...your ignorance is both a gift and a curse. Of course, I do not need to tell _you_ this. All I shall say, indeed, all I _can_ say is that your journey lies to the north. Far, far to the north...Until you release me from my bonds I cannot help you further. Good luck my boy."_

"_Release you from your bonds? What are you talking about?" Minato asked, his arm finally giving in to his demands and reached out towards the middle of the two seats, just before he was enveloped in a bright flash of white light, temporarily blinding him. As he landed back on the vortex and reality slowly returned: returning time to the way it was and removing the false color from the world, he could hear the old man's voice disappear into his head._

"_When you see _him_, you will know."_

Minato sat there on the vortex, perplexed beyond all rationale, when reality finally returned to normal, and the S.E.E.S. helicopter was set down on the ground peacefully by Yukari. They began to descend, and as they did, they saw the figures of several familiar people emerge from the doors of the MH-53.

Fuuka, Shinjiro, Mitsuru, Aigis, Junpei, and Ken, in that order emerged from the fuselage of the craft and looked up into the sky to thanks their rescuers.

The mutual look of surprise on everyone's face was, as the pilot would later recall it: priceless.

"Y – you're..." Yukari slowly raised a finger and pointed at Mitsuru.

Mitsuru, on the ground, equally confused, simply gawked in awe.

"Y – you two...but...what...A – KI – HI – KO!" she began to scream Akihiko's name syllable by syllable, pointing her finger up at the diminishing winds in the sky as the three of them began to descend to their landing.

"That's not good, is it?" Akihiko asked Minato, both of them looking down at the angry Mitsuru below. Minato didn't speak, too engaged in his thoughts about what just happened to him to be bothered by Akihiko's trivial relationship problems. He just nodded his head and grunted.

Pending their landing, the following things could happen which occurred in Akihiko's head:

Mitsuru would tackle him to the ground in a giant hug, express her love for him and his heroism, a possibility he hoped to the Fates would happen.

She would drag him away and "execute" him behind a tree.

She would execute him right there on the spot.

Or, even worse, she would publicly humiliate both Minato and Yukari for their "treason" against S.E.E.S.

When Yukari and Minato disappeared on December 31, 2015, it was a massive embarrassment for S.E.E.S. Paranormal Police organizations all over the world criticized S.E.E.S. for not even being capable of controlling its own members or giving them incentives to work for the betterment of mankind. There were even proceedings to have S.E.E.S. thrown out of the Valley of the Queens and give their seat back to the Caliphate of Mecca.

Ultimately, Chairman Tanaka's wealth and influence "persuaded" the other members of the Valley of the Queens to accept the official S.E.E.S. report. The report, written by Mitsuru herself, stated they drowned while attempting to board a ship with a known shadow vector on it.

That was a blatant and outright lie and was one of the reasons S.E.E.S. was in a precarious state of internal affairs today. That report, which essentially abandoned Yukari and Minato, caused so much tension at the time that virtually all the original members of S.E.E.S. began to distance themselves from one another...an effect which has lasted to this day.

Once they were a few feet from the ground and Yukari forced Isis back into her soul, Mitsuru did two things that were very unbecoming of her and she probably would never do again.

First, she helped Minato off of his feet, as he was still on the ground, pondering. Gathering him up, she hugged both him and Yukari at the same time, forcing the two of them in her warm embrace.

The second thing everyone noticed was that she wept. She broke down into tears, her face in between the shoulders of the two.

"I'm sorry..." she said through sniffs and tears, tightening her grip on them.

For the past two years, she had been condemning the couple. She damned her father. She cursed Ryoji. She believed in her heart of hearts that they had abandoned their mission: to protect the world from evil. She truly thought that they were cowards. Cowards who ran away for fear of their lives, never realizing that it was not a mark of cowardice, but a signal of personal strength and dissatisfaction.

For the past two years, Yukari and Minato have had to deal with the guilt of leaving their friends behind to deal with the demons that they had failed to defeat together. For two years, Mitsuru had dealt with the guilt of lying to herself and the rest of the world – the rest of her friends in order to satisfy some sort of twisted degree of duty.

Not so anymore.

Maybe they hadn't lost their bonds of friendship after all. Two years certainly hadn't broken their spirits...yet. But clearing up a false truth was one matter in and of itself. Accepting a humble apology as a sign of solidarity was another.

Conjuring up the strength needed to fight as a single unit; nay, a single _family_ was another issue entirely.

As Mitsuru's crying soaked Yukari and Minato's shoulders in hot tears, the question at hand was not what enemy they were fighting, or even how they would defeat it. It was _if_ they could defeat it...

ELSEWHERE

In a long, sleek, black stretch limousine somewhere in the middle of rural Japan, an old man with a large nose sat chained to a large, blue chair. A blond-haired woman in a similar blue dress came up to him with a saucer and teacup in hand, with a spoon and a few cubes of sugar on the side. Steam was rising from the surface of the tea as the blond woman knelt down and began stirring the sugar into the tea in front of the old man.

"Well...it seems as if one of their problems has been solved," the old man said, leaning his head forward as much as he could to sip the tea from the cup that the woman was offering him.

"Oh? And how would we know _that_?" the woman asked, putting the cup on the saucer and placing the whole set on her chair for a few moments.

"Look at my left hand," the old man said.

He was chained to the chair by all his limbs – even his neck. A total of five shackles were enslaving him to the chair, forever ensuring his capitulation to _superior powers_. The woman let her eye wander down to the man's left wrist, before jumping back in surprise.

"I – it's gone!?" she shrieked.

"Yes...one obstacle gone and four to go...I wonder if they have the determination to-"

The woman took the teacup and placed it by the old man's lips again, forcing him to drink it, before she spoke up.

"Of course they have the determination to carry out this task. They _aren't_ average humans, after all," the woman reminded the man of this very important fact of their conversation, causing the old man to laugh.

"Yes...yes I suppose not. We'll just have to wait and see, shall we?" the man asked, forcing his eyes to look out the window.

"It's raining," he said softly, noticing the soft pitter-patter of waiting drizzling onto the window.

"Yes. Yes I suppose it is."


	9. Velvet Underground Railroad

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter VIII: Velvet Underground Railroad**

It was about the same time that Mitsuru broke down into tears that Fuuka began an analysis on everyone who was present, checking their vitals and if anything was wrong with them. A curious fact should be noted in that she did only a cursory check on Shinjiro's vitals and didn't even bother checking his mental health.

"That's all well and good; frankly, I don't give a damn. Can we please get out of here before that..._thing_ decides to do us over again?" Shinjiro said, stuffing his hands in his pockets again after lighting a cigarette. "And Aki...it's good to have you back."

It seemed that, out of everyone around him, Akihiko was the only one Shinjiro actually cared about, or at least paid any attention to. The other members of S.E.E.S. had either sold their souls to the Valley of the Queens or were too damn emotional about their current situation. Case and point: Mitsuru.

"I said, 'hurry the hell up'!" he shouted, forcing Mitsuru to break from her embrace from Yukari and Minato and turn around to shout back at Shinjiro.

"Would you shut the hell up and be quiet for a few minutes!?"

"A few minutes!? We don't _have_ a few minutes! That thing took down our helicopter in case you remem-"

Minato looked towards Shinjiro and saw that his mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. He looked like he was shouting, and made several hand gestures before Mitsuru shouted back at him. He folded his arms, said something quietly, before Mitsuru ran up and slapped him.

Why were they fighting? What good could come out of this?

These were the thoughts milling around in Minato's head, before Yukari placed a hand on his shoulder. Her hand felt warm, and her touch was like a stream on relief washing over him. She came around to his face, said something that he couldn't hear, before kissing him on the cheek and going over to talk to Akihiko.

Over by the helicopter, he saw...Aigis! Aigis, who was walking towards him with a smile on her face, her arms folded. When she got over to him, she leaned over and whispered something into his ear, before pulling back and smiling again.

Someone also whispered something into his ear. Another female voice. A voice he could clearly hear.

"_So _you're_ the brat that took down the Reaper, huh? I don't know whether or not I should be thanking you, but I seriously doubt our plans will succeed while you still live."_

The female voice rang in his head like a bell, pounding away on the inside of his skull. He tried to turn his head to the side, to see who was talking to him. To see why there was suddenly an incessant droning in his brain.

But he couldn't move. The other members of S.E.E.S. too were going around and speaking to each other. Mitsuru pulled out a PDA and was snapping her fingers at the others. Ken pulled out a laptop from seemingly out of nowhere and was typing something in as fast as he could, resting it on his free arm.

Suddenly and without warning, the world turned black again. False color surrounded Minato, and once again he was thrust into a world where only his mind could run free.

"_Here, allow me to set you free from this world and send you to the next," _ the woman said, still formless. _'Give my regards to the Reaper,_" she said once more, before a pale woman appeared directly in front of him, coming into existence just as he blinked. She had jet black hair, a stark comparison to her skin, so thin and pale that Minato could see the veins popping out of her.

In less than a second, her lips met his and he could taste the slight taste of something foul on her mouth. Whether it was her purple lipstick or some other concoction of this otherworldly realm was beyond him, even as she drew back slowly and kept staring into his eyes.

"_Ah...well now, you are not a normal human after all...this...this should be _fun_," _the woman said, disappearing into the background once again. A man's voice rung through Minato's head this time, a voice he slightly remembered.

"_Of the beings of this realm, you who hold the power of the Persona are quite rare...and quite powerful...I shall give you time to gather your thoughts while I gather mine...until we meet again, my dear soul-less Fool...until we meet again..."_

Just like that, Minato was thrust back into the "real" world – whatever that meant anyway. Over the course of the last seven years, his definition of the word had gone from absolute to circumstantial, then to outright delusion and paranoia. In the depths of his heart, Minato still actually believed that he would wake up one day and receive his proper dorm assignment from Mitsuru.

And, of course, the first thing that had occurred to him upon his "space normalization" - as S.E.E.S. would later call it – was that they were all having a huddled discussion by the wreckage of the S.E.E.S. MH-53. From their hushed whispers, Minato could pick up words like "Chernobyl" and "vampire" before he trudged over for a better grasp on the situation.

"...sent them out to intercept you...heh, of all the words I thought I'd say to you two after these two years, the last thing I'd expect was an apology," Mitsuru said, looking at Yukari with a smile.

"Intercept us? We...never saw anyone remotely affiliated with a ParaPol. Are you sure the transmission was received?" Yukari asked, folding her arms across her chest and looking down at the ground. She was starting to look a lot less cute and a lot more like her "business self" - the person she presented almost every day during their adventures as an independent ParaPol.

"Yes, our last communique with the S.E.V. was when they were over the Eastern Carpathians."

It was Ken who spoke up this time, but not loud enough for all of them to hear. Rather, he called Fuuka over to his laptop to show her something on it, to which Fuuka left their little circle and rushed over to Ken, who was sitting down by the helicopter. Fuuka took a glance at Ken's computer screen while he made different movements with his hands and Fuuka placed her hands at her side and shook her head. The twinkle disappeared from her eyes.

"What is it, Fuuka?" Mitsuru asked, turning her head around her shoulder to glance at the two of them. No one, it had seemed, invited Minato into this conversation, and apparently it wasn't on their priority list either.

Well, it didn't matter, anyway. What Fuuka was about to tell them made everyone disinterested in the conversation.

Fuuka's voice was low, barely a mumble. Minato stepped in closer once more to pick up any more words. What had just transpired to him was a matter of subjective truth. It could have been a hallucination or one of Minato's many "Knightmares".

What Fuuka spoke was the absolute truth. The truth that could not be questioned. It was the word of God himself.

"Nuke One crashed in the Eastern Carpathians, near the Danube River. From the spread of the debris, it looks as if it had exploded in the air: no survivors," Fuuka said. Mitsuru just stood there, here head still looking behind her shoulder. The rest of the team either looked down at the ground or looked away towards the mountains. Akihiko stared at Fuuka.

"Nuke Two...it looks like it landed safely on the border between Romania and the Ukraine. No signs of a fight outside the landing site...the possibility of survivors is extremely high..."

"The Borderlands, huh?" Mitsuru asked, looking down at the ground and closing her eyes. "That's the territory of the Black Sea ParaPols...they won't like having us snooping around like this..." she said, placing her index and middle finger on her forehead and shaking her head.

"What's the status of Outpost Athens's S.E.V.?"

"Currently deployed to Crete for a standard spirit tag and sweep," Ken replied, tapping away on his laptop with a speed that made Aigis look in awe.

"Outpost Moscow?" Mitsuru asked again

"Somewhere in Siberia."

"Outpost Berlin?"

"Training new recruits."

"London?"

"Hm...it seems they're fr – nevermind. British Muslims are still pissed that we took the Meccan Caliphate's seat in the Valley of the Queens. London's S.E.V. has their hands full trying to _survive_."

"_Wonderful_," Mitsuru said, shaking her head again and walking over to the destroyed helicopter. "That means we're the _only_ S.E.E.S. team on the continent that can handle this, and we don't even have transportation...and we don't leave our men behind...not anymore..." she whispered, placing her right hand on the helicopter and standing just beside Fuuka and Ken.

"Leave them...Mitsuru, are you-" Yukari was about to ask if Mitsuru was alright, before she turned around yo address her team.

"We have to rescue those men!" she shouted, turning around to the rest of her team, before Shinjiro took his hands out of his pocket and threw his cigarette on the ground, only to light a new one a few seconds later.

"That's all good and wonderful, but you're forgetting we're shit outta' luck. No helicopter. No allies. We're _stuck_ in this god forsaken hell hole that you people call a country. Nice job, hero, hey, while you're at it, maybe you can get us killed along the way?"

"Shinji..." Akihiko pleaded, stretching his arm out to his friend, before Minato heard a loud coughing sound and looked over to Yukari, who appeared to be the culprit. She was clearing her throat, raising her hands in the air to prevent any trouble from occurring (or at least trying to), and opened her eyes to reveal a slight twinkle. She curled her left hand into a fist and used the bottom of it to hit her right palm in front of her chest to signal that she had made a discovery of some sorts.

"Aragaki-san...that's not _entirely_ accurate," she said in a hushed tone, forcing everyone around her, even Minato, to stand there stupidly and blink.

"What? Which part?" Mitsuru asked, placing her hand on her chin and looking at Yukari as if she had lost her mind.

TWO HUNDRED KILOMETERS TO THE NORTH

BORDERLANDS BETWEEN UKRAINE & ROMANIA

Huddled in the dark corner of a grimy dungeon cell was a red-eyed, black haired man in his mid-twenties sipping on a cup of hot chocolate. His clothes were torn. The walls reflected the decrepit state of the compound, paint was peeling off in some parts and one could see the mold underneath.

Outside of the iron bars that kept this man trapped was a single fluorescent light bulb, manned by a single guard armed with nothing more than his fists and a tiny, silver watch.

Any minute now he expected the cavalry to come in, guns blazing, and save him. A blip of red light around his neck indicated to the guard that the restraining collar they had placed on the man was still operational.

In the main hallway outside of the cell, a red light blinked on to indicate a shift change, forcing the guard to snap towards the steel door and click his heels together as it opened, saluting whomever it was that made their way through.

Standing in the doorway, in a dark grey overcoat with salt and pepper hair was a tall, tanned man of many years. His beard was as grey as his coat and his eyes, or eye rather, was small and beady.

The guard instantly shouted what would be his last words on earth:

"W – welcome, Commander Sears, sir!"


	10. The Journey North

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

Author's Note: Holy crud was this hard to write. Normally my thoughts are pretty clear as I'm writing these P3 chapters, but not this time. Anyway, after a long delay, here's the 9th chapter, enjoy!

**Chapter IX: The Journey North**

"We don't leave our men behind...not anymore..."

When Mitsuru spoke those words, she wasn't just talking about her own determination and commitment to save Outpost Chernobyl's S.E.V., she had opened up a sour batch of memories that no one in S.E.E.S. wanted to remember...

"_You want us to do what!?" Hidetoshi found himself shouting at Mitsuru. He had stood up and knocked his chair over, she remained sitting calmly behind her large oak desk, her citation cord which denoted her rank as S.E.E.S. Adjutant Commander hung lazily from the shoulder of her uniform._

"_You heard me," she said, throwing a manila folder on the desk in front of her for him to peruse._

"_Do this for us and you'll receive your invocation training."_

"_That's what you said four years ago," Hidetoshi quipped back._

_In reality, it was..._

As Minato and Yukari hung over a gust of garudyne winds coming from Isis, Minato pondered the thoughts, the "Knightmares" - as he had come to call them – in his head.

For some reason, ever since that dark April day seven years ago, the Knightmares began. First, it started off with Pharos,the physical manifestation of his ethereal being. After Nyx was defeated, he had hoped that they would have stopped, that he could have a normal life with the girl, now woman, he loved.

But life is not so.

They increased, and now Minato was pondering what was currently in his head.

"_Your journey lies to the north. Far, far to the north."_

"_You are a child of no one...and at the same time, you are a child of Man."_

Just what the hell it all meant, Minato didn't know. He remembered Igor being in one of his Knightmares, but now he wasn't sure if Igor was actually real or if he was just some surreal image produced by his persona when he was in need.

"Yukari, do you-"

"Hey! We almost thought you'd never come back!" he heard shouting from below just as he was about to finish his sentence. He had forgotten that the entire reason he was up in the air with Yukari right now was to gather the two pilots from Akihiko's helicopter along with Colonel Radic.

"Yes! You have not forgotten us, no?" he could hear Colonel Radic shouting – or maybe the colonel was simply talking, his voice boomed through the valley so much that it wouldn't be much of a surprise to Minato.

"Hey, you!" Yukari shouted, waving her arms in the air while ordering Isis to bring them down. Being like this...at peace yet slightly anxious...was this how it felt right before death? Was it how _they_ felt?

_Hidetoshi Odagiri and Chihiro Fushimi were both wearing tropical clothes and sunglasses. They had been deployed to the middle of the god-forsaken jungles of Central America to retrieve a relic for S.E.E.S. that was apparently more important than their lives. When Hidetoshi first joined S.E.E.S., he thought he would be saving innocents from evil and protecting the world, not playing archaeologist for the day and give his small contribution to the hypocrisy of the ParaPols._

_The tiny Hispanic man who was guiding them through the jungle spoke very little English and had never even heard of Japan, so it was difficult to tell whether or not he was actually leading them to their site of interest or he was preparing to sell them to slave traders. Either way, Hidetoshi kept one hand inside his shirt, gripping his "memory wipe" just in case._

_Taking a few steps along a beaten path, the guide said something in Spanish before using his arms to sway the branches of a tree out of their way to reveal..._

"Oi! I hope you have enough room up there for us," the pilot said as Yukari lowered them down to the cliff face, eventually bringing Isis back into her soul. He rubbed the back of his neck and laughed a little, turning around to face his unconscious co-pilot on the ground. "Five people, can you handle that?" the pilot asked, pointing towards Yukari and Minato before making a sweeping motion with his free arm towards everyone else on the cliff face.

"Five people...eh...erm..Colonel..."

"Milovan Radic, Madame Arisato. You have forgotten my name, no?" he said, putting a hand in front of his chest while doing a slight bow towards her. She felt her cheeks turn red.

"Yes...Colonel Radic, how much do you weigh?"

"Me, my dear!? Oh, a healthy hundred-and-fifty kilos!" he declared proudly, pounding his hefty chest with a clenched fist. Yukari hung her head in disbelief and mild shock.

"You and your near-dead friend over there?" Yukari said to the pilot, not even looking at his face. She directly her head towards the ground and mildly shook her head, hoping that they were lightweights.

"Dunno' about him, but I weigh sixty kilos. That kid's scrawnier than you think, I'm sure he doesn't even break the triple-digit mark," the pilot said, talking with his hands and trying to make eye contact with Yukari, who still had her head turned towards the ground.

"Minato." she said. Just his name, in no particular caring or concerned tone. "Since you have Orpheus to protect you, I'm going to have to bring these guys down first and then come back for you separately, can you handle that?' she asked, her head still pointing towards the ground, muttering to herself something along the lines of "hundred-and-fifty god damn kilos".

"Y – yeah, I can handle it," Minato said, looking down at his hands. Even though their personas sparred every week, Minato hadn't actually used his evoker since the Lake of Fire Incident, for the sole reason being that there was no enemy to fight that needed to be taken down with his persona. He used spirit-draining ammunition with regular guns and specialized sutras when it came to demonic spirits, but he doubted he would need to use his persona this time around.

He felt empty inside, not so much dissatisfied with his life, but dissatisfied with this  
"curse". The power that every other ParaPol on the planet wished they possessed. A power that haunted him every day with no practical or venerable use. Just like...

_It was a large golden sarcophagus, so ornate, so beautiful, the two of them didn't think they would lay their eyes on such a sight ever again._

"_It's so pretty..." Chihiro said, clinging to Hidetoshi's arm. He nodded._

_Lots of men with assault rifles were guarding the sarcophagus in the middle of this tiny jungle clearing. S.E.E.S. had arranged for local protection of the artifact until Outpost Havana's S.E.V. came to pick it up. The two of them were there on the ground to inspect the artifact and approve of its worthiness to S.E.E.S. headquarters._

_Hidetoshi knew that this mission wasn't normal. He knew that recovering an "artifact" somewhere in the Central American jungles wasn't going to be a walk in the park, but he didn't expect to have to open – virtually desecrate an item of burial in order to satisfy S.E.E.S.'s ever increasing lust for spiritual power._

"_Oi. Open it," he said, trying his best to speak unaccented English like Mitsuru. So far, it wasn't working, and the guards alongside their tiny Hispanic guide simply blinked at him. A few of them were snuffing tobacco and an even smaller group of them were standing over by a small stream a few meters away, either pissing or washing their hands._

_Hidetoshi made a few motions with his hands, clasping them together and then spreading them apart, then pointing at the golden sarcophagus. When one of the guards simply looked at him with nothing but cold eyes and chewing tobacco in his mouth, Hidetoshi pulled out his wallet filled with hundreds of American dollars and handed one of the bills to the guard who was staring at him. Immediately, the guard spit out his tobacco, took the money and turned around to face his allies, shouting something indecipherable in Spanish, before turning back to Hidetoshi and motioning him to follow._

_Hidetoshi nodded his head, Chihiro following closely by clinging tightly to Hidetoshi arm, before the guard reached the sarcophagus in the middle of the clearing, put down his assault rifle and picked up a small hammer and chisel from the ground. Holding the chisel in his left hand, he swung the hammer down so as to wedge it in between the casing and the cover, allowing the first light to pass through the lid in over two thousand years..._

Minato was slightly cold. The sun had set on this lukewarm spring day...Seven years ago, half a world away, he had died. On this very day, Aigis stayed by his bedside, caressing his hair and laughing with him until the sun went down. On this very day, Yukari had closed his eyes and kissed him for the last time in his life.

Now, he had the gift of life, and sat with his feet dangling over the cliff face, the wreckage of the S.E.E.S. helicopter behind him and the violet and pink sky before him. It hadn't been long since Yukari had left to drop the crew and Colonel Radic off down below, but it had felt like forever.

Ever since that day, six years ago, when the L.O.S.T. Brought back the Dark Hour, and in turn, brought him back to life, he thanked The Fates for allowing him back to this realm. They had said that they had lived a tragic existence – one of immortality – but as Minato watched the peacefulness before him, he wondered if that was so?

Then again, the carnage that had occurred only an hour prior was already being forgotten by the world. Vampires, Demons, Shadows. Human society made fanciful stories about them. Fanciful stories of God and Creation.

If only they knew. The reality was in the hands of the Seven Queens. Pretty soon, all of this will have been forgotten or attributed to a physical error such as a crash or an act of terrorism. Vampires will have had nothing to do with the situation at all.

"Minato..."

Could it be that the work of the ParaPols themselves were futile? After all, the ultimate "destiny" of the Universe was in the hands of The Fates, and they were immortal. Was it really worth spending so much time and energy over?

"Minato..."

Minato looked over his shoulder, feeling a chill. He touched his back and rubbed his shoulder a little, cracking his neck in the process. When he turned around, he saw that the sky had darkened even more, and still no Yukari in sight.

"Geez, Yukari. If you don't get here soon, you may not be able to see me...wait..." Minato felt stupid for saying that to himself. Reaching inside his navy blue jacket, he pulled out his evoker, before bringing it to his head and pulling the trigger.

"Orpheus! Agi!" Minato shouted just before he pulled the trigger. Instantly, his persona of The Fool Arcanum came forth and created a fireball in between its hands, illuminating the space around him in an orange glow.

For some reason, sitting there on the cliff, the sun setting in the distance reminded him of the lazy days he spent hanging out with Junpei in the lounge of their old dorm.

As the flame continued to burn, Minato closed his eyes for what he thought was only a few seconds. When he opened them again, Orpheus was gone, as the sky was deep black – not a single star graced the sky.

"Aw, geez, how long did I-"

"_A man came up to me,_

_I told him to go away,_

_He said Death had claimed to say,_

_Nyx, Grim, and God are gone,_

_So whom shall you murder today?" he heard a voice say to him. He could do nothing but stare into the black sky, before he blinked to snap himself back to reality._

Minato blinked, and the sky turned back to its original velvet color. Orpheus had disappeared into his soul, however, a green light was emanating just a few meters away from him.

"So, did I keep you waiting?" he heard Yukari ask him from the vortex of wind she was riding on just below him. In a few seconds, she was at eye level with him, and he was able to answer her to her face.

"Kept me waiting a little longer than I had hoped for, but other than that," he said, a smile forming on his face. He found that his evoker was still in his hands, so he re-holstered it. No need for such a thing when in such fair and fine company.

"Consider it payback for making me wait a year for you to take me to that amusement park," she said, smiling right back at him. "Hop on, Isis and I can catch you. That colonel guy that Akihiko knows – he managed to get us some Army helicopters to take up north to the Borderlands, can you believe that!?"

"No, I can't," Minato said flatly as he jumped off of the cliff. Not so much "jumped" as he simply walked on the air pathway that Isis and Yukari had provided for him.

"Well, believe it. It looks like their little anti-vampire operation has been put to a halt until we rescue Outpost Chernobyl's S.E.V.,"

"Rescue operation, huh? This should be interesting..." Minato said, but in actuality, he doubted the intentions that Mitsuru had for herself or for S.E.E.S. He knew it wasn't right to _not_ trust her, but after what happened all those years ago...

_Hidetoshi and Chihiro were standing on a beach somewhere in Mexico – or Belize, or whatever the hell country they were in currently, personally, the two of them didn't care. After two weeks in Central America, the best thing for the both of them right now was to get back to Yakushima for some well-deserved rest and relaxation._

_They stood hand in hand, watching the sun rise over the Caribbean. A heavy-lift helicopter from Outpost Havana should be within sighting distance in a few minutes, and while they were _supposed_ to be guarding their "treasure" with their very lives, they had entrusted the duty to the rebels whom they had bribed to help them in their mission. _

_The warm, blue waters of the Caribbean Sea contrasted starkly from the dark, dull jungle behind them. It reminded them of Yakushima: the warm sea and pristine landscape gave a welcome break from the impersonal and dangerous work of S.E.E.S._

"_So, you museum?" a local rebel asked them, walking up to them from his spot near the jungle-line just behind them._

"_Huh?" Hidetoshi replied, but Chihiro was able to answer the man quickly and cordially._

"_No, we're...collectors."_

"_Collectors of a relic known only to the Valley of the Queens?" the rebel answered back, pulling a cigar from his pocket and putting it in his mouth. While he searched for a lighter in his trousers, Hidetoshi and Chihiro looked at each other in mild awe._

"_H – How do you-"_

"_Do you think discoveries like this are made every day? Heh, you are lucky things turned out like this, those residing in the Valley are good and kind," the rebel said, finally finding a lighter in his pockets and lighting the cigar, inhaling deeply before blowing the smoke away from the two S.E.E.S. members._

"_What are you-"_

_The rebel pointed at the water, towards the sun, before handing Hidetoshi a pair of partially damaged binoculars. It took him well over a minute of searching the horizon to find the periscope popping up from beneath the waves of the warm ocean._

"I still don't trust this..." Akihiko said, stepping into one of three UH-60 helicopters that had recently landed on the bloody highway where the military convoy had been destroyed. In order to keep silent about the incident, the citizens in the nearby villages were going to have their memories wiped by local ParaPols as soon as S.E.E.S. got out of the area.

"Relax, Mister Sanada. My machines are safe, yes?" Colonel Radic said through his thick beard. Akihiko couldn't tell whether or not he was smiling, but one thing was certain, he did not trust helicopters anymore. Not in this country and _certainly_ not a helicopter that didn't have at least the most rudimentary Paranormal defenses.

"Colonel, I-"

"You come with me then, yes!? You will be comfortable!" the colonel said, walking over to Akihiko and patting the wind out of his lungs. Akihiko coughed a little before motioning the colonel to stop. From the direction of the cliffs, Mitsuru began to make out two figures silhouetted against the moon.

"Hey! I think they're back!" she shouted to everyone as loud as she could, prompting Shinjiro to wake up from the nap he was taking on the ground and mumble a few derogatory comments about her in Japanese.

"Oi! Sorry to have kept you waiting!" they heard Yukari shout from her position on the vortex. Isis could not be seen, and was probably somewhere else, probably protecting the two of them from the rear.

"It's almost time to leave! I want to get there before sunrise!" Mitsuru shouted back at them. Shinjiro grunted again.

"Yeah, hold on!" Yukari shouted back, descending quickly to allow herself and Minato to board their helicopters as quickly as possible. As soon as they were a meter above the ground, Yukari called Isis back into the sea of her soul and ran towards the helicopter which was parked in the middle of the formation. Only Aigis was inside and she was reading a small, red book.

"Hello Aigis," Yukari said, waving at Aigis, before the android turned her head and smiled at the two of them as they bent their heads to enter the helicopter.

"Hello again, Yukari. Minato," she said, nodding at both of them when she said their names, "I trust you two have been behaving properly and professionally in the long time you took to rescue Minato-san from the cliffs," Aigis asked, prompting Yukari to blush, Minato just shook his head in the affirmative and turned his head to face outside.

A feeling of consternation was building up inside him. He was filled with so many emotions, and these Knightmares consistently played upon them and preyed on his mind at night. It was almost as if his mind were being devoured by a Shadow...

The pilot for their helicopter closed their side doors before getting into the cockpit of the helicopter, immediately putting on his helmet to communicate with the other two pilots the delicate and secretive move they were about to undertake.

S.E.E.S. didn't leave its people behind. Not anymore, and when the pilot began to start up the helicopters rotors, it seemed that this statement became true, because they owed it to _them_ not to abandon their comrades anymore. They owed it to themselves to rescue their comrades before it was too late.

But, as they would later find out, the very fact that there was a vampire rebellion occurring simultaneously may have been too much, even for them...

"Papa One, I am taking off, please prepare to follow me, exit approach-"

As the pilot began to talk into his headset, Minato centered his head once again to Aigis and the small book she was reading. It had no title and no apparent author, but she was reading it with rapt attention before closing her eyes and mouthing a few words. Were they words of prayer? A spell of protection? This, Minato didn't know. What he did know was that they were off the ground now, and that was all he needed to know.

_As soon as the submarine surfaced above the waves, the rebel who had given Hidetoshi the binoculars had smacked him over the head with the butt of his rifle. Chihiro would suffer the same fate as she looked in horror down at Hidetoshi's body when she heard the "crack" coming from his skull._

_The rebel commander, chewing a stick of gum, walked over to the two S.E.E.S. members, unconscious at the feet of his subordinate, before looking the man straight in the eye._

"_Couldn't have done it better myself," he said, placing one of his hands on the soldier's shoulder and nodding his head in satisfaction._

"_Sir, were they a part of the deal, as well?" the rebel asked, pointing the barrel of his gun down towards Hidetoshi._

"_Yes, yes. Two civilians trained in persona-wielding along with the dead bastard. Not much to worry about now other than our money," the commander said, his beret slightly blocking his left eye, just like Chihiro's hair covering her face._

"_Poor souls...they should have never played around with the Eighth Power of God...now their souls are lost but to Him," the commander said, making a cross across his chest with his fingers and kissing the small wooden cross across his chest before taking another look at the submarine._

"_I guess they're the only hope of Salvation for these two now...contact the sub, tell them we have their cargo...and tell them we don't want it anymore."_

??

In an elaborate stone-walled room lit only with torches, three pale women were kept in cages hanging from the ceiling, their silent growls haunting the night even as they slept. A man in a dark cloak walked out from under the foyer and came into view of a large, wooden throne, hiding his face from the light of the torches by shielding it with his robes.

Up on the throne sat a skinny man silently playing with dice, singing a tune to himself...

"We are...living...our lives..." the man silently sang, tossing the dice into the air and catching them with his other hand before looking down at the robed figure before him.

"Yes, what is it that you want from me?" the man asked in a harsh voice, stressing the 'me' in his sentence.

"_They_ have begun to travel north, as you had hoped, _sir_," the cloaked figure replied, a slight hint of venom in his voice, although he did not have the courage to openly express it.

"_Wondrous_...you are dismissed," the man said in a monotone voice, seemingly uninterested/

The cloaked figure drew back at his masters' apparent indifference to the news, prompting the man to throw the dice in the air with his left hand and take out his gun with his right, shooting both in the air with such accuracy that they exploded into tiny clouds of white dust before his eyes.

"I said you are _dismissed_..." the man said more angrily this time, forcing the robed figure to nod his head and drift back into the shadows of the foyer, before the man with the gun sat back down upon the throne and smiled.

"When the Four Horsemen ride, Darkness shall blanket the Earth, and a new King shall rise from the ashes...of course, there's more than Five Gospels, _friends_..." the man said to himself, beginning to giggle to himself just as the robed figure flew back out into the night.


	11. A Dead Memory

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

Author's Note: Once again, I reiterate that the work you are reading is pure fiction. The statements made herein do not reflect my own personal beliefs and are not meant to endorse or approve of any religion over another.

**Chapter X: A Dead Memory**

For the last three hours, nobody in any of the helicopters said a word. Everyone stared into each others eyes with the slight suspicion and apprehension that followed those who were about to die. The pilots looked down at their instruments, never trusting the horizon. It was their enemy, their bogeyman in the night.

About twenty minutes into the fourth hour, from the slight green glow of the cockpit, the pilot of Minato's helicopter, the lead in the formation, turned around and looked at the three of them in the eye, the light from the waning moon hitting his helmet.

"We're here," is all he said, before turning around. He didn't offer any glimpse of emotion in the darkness of that helicopter. If he had the slightest bit of enthusiasm or anxiety in his voice, he didn't show it...

The Borderlands. An area that stretched from the Black Sea and Chernobyl to the Baltic and Berlin. One of the most active paranormal regions of the world and the only region not claimed by the Valley of the Kings or its lesser incarnations. The ParaPols here were citizens. They pledged allegiance to no ParaPol. Served no one but themselves...and often killed the members of the Valley of the Kings. For what purpose, no one knew. One thing was certain, though: if the vampires were rebelling, then the Borderlands was going to play a vital role in the coming war...

"Hey...hey Trascu, do you read me?" the pilot of Minato's helicopter asked over his headset, prompting a loud "yes" from one of the other pilots.

"We'll set them down half a kilometer away from the crash site...it's not safe any closer."

"May I ask why?"

"Black Sea ParaPols..._swarming_ all over the place. They're pissed at something..."

"Roger, I'll inform Gusa...Christ, mate...I...I'll see ya' around then. Radio silence until the drop.'

The pilot of one of the other helicopters suddenly tuned out, before the pilot of Minato's own turned out the cockpit lights and switched his radio off.

They couldn't see him, nary the slight twitching of his shoulders as he rearranged his hands around the flight stick, but the pilot was praying to whatever God there was left in the Universe. Praying that he wouldn't see the Gates of Heaven for another day.

Minato looked out the window, noticing for the first time how beautiful the moon looked from the sky. It had stayed white and pure for the last six years, a terrible machine lurking under its surface – sealed away for the past seven.

"I wonder..." he whispered to himself, too low to even notice it himself, but Aigis's ears were so sensitive that she was able to pick up his speech easily, looking away from the other window and turning her head towards Minato.

"You wonder what, Minato-san?"

Why Aigis was using the honorific "san" when she had known him for well over the past two decades (and worked with him for a good portion of seven years) was beyond him. He blinked and looked directly into her deep blue eyes, which shone through the darkness to pierce strangely into Minato's heart. It was a cold, mysterious stare she gave him, much like the one seven years ago when they first met face to face – Yakushima.

"Oh...it's...uh...why do you think all of this is happening, Aigis?" Minato couldn't help but stutter. He struggled to speak to one of the people he had been close with for years. Maybe it was because of his Knightmares – the nightmarish visions in his head that seemed to be more than just a dream.

Or maybe it was simply the waning of the moon?

"_This_? You mean, why are the vampires rebelling?" Aigis asked curiously. Yukari shook her head, trying to remain awake.

"Yeah," Minato said, nodding his head to indicate his point, forcing Aigis to pause for a moment, looking down at the floor of the helicopter, before looking once again into his eyes.

"I do not have the answer to that, Minato-san. All I know is that we must carry out the duty we have affirmed ourselves to – the duty to protect mankind..." Aigis said this in a flat, monotone voice – reminiscent of her earlier days. Even she wasn't showing it, Minato knew what was developing in Aigis's mind...Yukari knew too, and so did one other man whom they hadn't seen in two years...

"_Attention, all S.E.E.S. personnel. The time is now: eight-oh-five A.M. Please clear all residential halls within the next twenty-five minutes. Thank You."_

_The friendly voice of one of S.E.E.S.'s civic androids filled the loudspeakers for but a few moments before leaving Yakushima Headquarters in a solemn silence once again. For many in the compound, the day would start off as normal as any other day: they would leave the residential areas of the compound and either work as support for the various combat teams around the world, or they would serve administrative and scientific functions. _

_For Aigis, however, the day started off with a fresh "hello" to the man who always visited her around lunchtime on her way to the lab. Getting out of her bed – a chamber specially built to cool her circuits and send her into a coma similar to the human experience of sleep – she donned her white lab coat and red armband before heading out the door and into the main android service hallway._

_Today would be the last time she would walk down this path._

_Punching the "down" button on the elevator, she began to sing a tune that she had found quite catchy when Yukari showed it to her on the internet._

"_Helium…Neon…Argon and Krypton…Xenon…Radon…Gallium and Cadmium…"_

_She loved singing this song. It reminded her of all that was beautiful in life: consistency. Humans changed, as did their personas. She, too, had to admit that she was changing to love a man for who he is and not for who he was. However, the beauty of science was that established facts never changed. The air that her human friends breathed was the same air that their ancestors had breathed. The Earth orbited the same sun and Japan was always in the same place on the world's maps._

_But today, she would change in a fundamental way._

_The elevator "dinged" as it reached the bottom of the compound: the scientific and medical research facilities. They were mainly used for office and lab spaces, but there was one person – two actually, living down here._

_Firstly, as she exited the elevator alone, she noticed that the lights were already on in one of the labs. A smile welled up on her face when she noticed this and walked over to the door, marked "Organic Engineering"._

_From the other side of the door, greeting her as she walked in, was an android of her own creation. Aloof from the mass production of the other S.E.E.S. civic androids, she was covered from the neck down in an elastic black material which adhered to her mechanical body as tight as it could. Yet, there were no creases in the material. The android was hers and hers alone, but the protective skin had been created by her soon after her creation...a small testament to..._

"_Mother! Welcome!" the android said gleefully, turning her head to rest her red eyes upon Aigis, wearing a warm smile on her face and nodding in approval for her creation's hard work._

"_Hello and good morning, Metis," Aigis said, walking over to Metis just as she was putting down a notebook and pulled Aigis into a large bear hug. This was customary every morning, and Aigis returned the gesture with love. A few seconds later, Metis disengaged from her hug with her "mother" and went back to taking notes from a computer in front of her._

"_How does it look, Metis? Do you think today will be the day?" Aigis asked tenderly, putting her hand on Metis's shoulder as she wrote._

"_Everything checks out, mother! I think we'll be ready to operate once the last of the tissue is formed!" Metis said excitedly. Aigis had never seen her so happy, the smile on her face truly human, even if her body wasn't._

_She reminded Aigis so much of herself when she was young. The innocence of youth. How she yearned to become a child again, if only in mind. But today, she would transcend her body and become a woman._

_An alarm in the computer sounded, and Aigis was thrust out of her pleasant thoughts to look at the screen, indicating that the last of the tissue had been formed and was ready for transplant. She tightened her grip on Metis's shoulder, prompting her creation – her daughter – to put the notebook down and type a single command onto the keyboard._

OPEN_._

_There was a large metallic wall in front of them. Was. Now there stood several giant glass vials in perfectly set rows of five. The depth of the vials was so that one could look directly into the void beyond the first row of vials and not see the end of it. But what was so special...so unique about these vials was not their size or the vastness of their storage, it was what they carried inside the yellow liquid which filled them._

_In the first vial were a pair of kidneys. In the second, a pair of lungs. In the third, an adult female human skull. A heart in the fourth and a set of blue eyes in the fifth. The organs stretched on for what seemed to be eternity: bones, pieces of skin, arteries and veins. A brain._

_There was a reason no one else lived on this level of the base, a reason that only Aigis knew as she was knocked out by Metis, inserting several cables into her mother's body, before mounting her limp body on a gurney and switching the lights to a bright red..._

"Aigis..." Minato said softly. He could see the hurt in her eyes. What they did two years ago: Yukari, Ryoji, and him. What they did was not justice. They had hurt the people they loved the most. Possibly forever.

"Approaching LZ now, folks! Saddle up and prepare to move out!" the pilot yelled back towards the bay where the three S.E.E.S. members were sitting in silence. Minato could probably guess that all the other helicopters were silent as well. There was nothing to say between them anymore. Nothing at all. That special relationship they had enjoyed back in Gekkoukan died years ago.

Aigis put her book down and stared out the window once again, wishing for it all to be over so she could just go home, back to the basement of the S.E.E.S. compound, and be with Metis through all eternity...

"_Hey! You're not allowed in here!" Metis shouted as a man with slick black hair and a yellow scarf around his neck nonchalantly walked through the door to Aigis' lab and looked down at her with a smile._

"_Well, hello there," he said seductively. Aigis turned her head, her eyes closed, and whispered the man's name._

"_Ryoji?"_

"_Lucky guess," he said with a laugh, crouching down to look at her face to face. She was lying on a bed. Machine parts laying around her on the floor. The vials were empty. _

_Metis tried to grab Ryoji's arm and drag him away, but Aigis used her right arm to slowly reach around her bed until she found Ryoji's hand and held it. Metis let go and backed away._

"_So..." Ryoji began. Aigis didn't open her eyes. She couldn't. Even if she could, she was using all her energy right now to grip Ryoji's hand, which, currently wasn't much force._

"_You know, your grip was a lot tighter when you were a robot," Ryoji said playfully, forcing Aigis to smile at least a bit, at least for a moment._

"_Yeah...but yours was too when you were a demon," she said in a low whisper, her blond hair covered in a mixture of umbilical fluid and blood._

"_The only difference is, I still am," Ryoji said through a smile, looking over to Metis. "Can she open her eyes?" he asked her._

"_Not yet. I am not even sure if the organic eyes have fully developed...mother, I'm sorry..."_

"_It's alright, Metis...Ryoji...I can feel...I can feel your hand for the very first time...is that...good?" she whispered, her eyes still closed._

"_Ryoji...I...do you..."_

_Ryoji tightened his grip on Aigis's hand, forcing a tear to well up in Aigis's right eye. She could contain it. What she couldn't contain was she happiness, which turned into a ball of energy to be released by Aigis into the air around her._

"_Thank you," she said softly, before drifting off to sleep, her head drilling into the pillow beneath her and her grip slacking from Ryoji's own. Ryoji let go, caressed her hair and kissed her forehead, before turning around to face the door. Just before he reached for the doorknob, he turned his head to Metis._

"_Tell your mother one thing, okay Metis?"_

"_Yes? What is it?" she asked, blinking at Ryoji before looking at her mother with newfound awe and respect._

"_Tell her..."_

"You're on your own from here!" the pilot shouted as they got out of the helicopter.

"Oi! You better not abandon us! I expect you to be back here when we signal for you!" Mitsuru shouted back at the pilot of her helicopter, whose smile had turned to a frown at the thought of having to stay in Transylvania longer than he had to.

"Fuuka! Spiritual analysis!" Ken said, pointing towards Fuuka as she gingerly stepped out of her helicopter. A quick nod of her head and she was looking down at the ground with her hands folded over her heart.

_Spirits of Energy, Ice, Wind, and Fire..._

_Spirits of Light and Chaos_

_Help me find those whom my heart seeks_

_Help me find Myself!_

As she internally recited the mantra, a pale white glow began to surround her small frame, until she opened her eyes and looked up towards the sky. Speaking as softly as she could, she acted as a medium between the spirits of the Earth and themselves.

"Here lies man and demon. The immortal and immortal are one. Go forth, ye who wish to defy time, for your hearts have led you to Salvation..."

Fuuka collapsed after whispering this, but no one helped her or even ran to her aid. After seven years of witnessing events like this, the sudden reality of life and death had become all too routine.

Once they were all safely on the ground – S.E.E.S., the S.E.V. pilots, and Colonel Radic – the Romanian pilots began takeoff procedures, grinning as they did to get the hell out of dodge.

No one came to the Borderlands anymore, not unless they had a death wish. If you weren't a demon or a ParaPol, you didn't belong. It was an eternal battlefield, an eternal Armageddon.

As Aigis stared into the black sky, watching the helicopter drift away into nothingness, she noticed a faint entity against the white moon. No one else noticed it but her, and whether it was fate or simply good luck was another matter altogether. Considering that it held still for a few seconds before moving across the moon's surface, Aigis began to walk, then run, then flat out sprint towards its general direction as the rest of S.E.E.S. watched and ran after her.

Could it be...

"_Ryoji? Is that you?" Aigis asked from her bed. Metis was keeping watch over the room while simultaneously taking notes on her mother's conditions from the computer monitor on a nearby desk. It was Christmas, and the room was decorated with red and green streamers. Ryoji stood by the side of Aigis's bed, her eyes still closed._

"_Yeah, it's me, Aigis," stroking a tiny bit of her blond hair and pushing it out of her face. She had been lying in bed for over a month now, but she still couldn't open her eyes. Metis had said it was the transition phase from machine to woman that was causing her complications, but Ryoji knew better. Ryoji knew it was much, much deeper than _that_._

"_Ryoji...can you...stay here...with me?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper._

"_Of course I can," Ryoji said softly, turning around to pull up a chair to her bed. The vials were gone._

_It had been a long time since he had first met S.E.E.S. In the last four years with them, he had gone on their missions and listened to their plight and their delight. He had taken pleasure in both tasting Shinjiro's cooking as well as listening to Mitsuru's daily briefings. _

_But the thing he most enjoyed was seeing _her_. Every morning, when everyone else in the compound did their best to avoid the "demon of Death", she came down every day to the research block to carry out experiments that would eventually culminate in this moment right now. They went out for lunch every Wednesday, but never bought or ate anything. He was a demon and she was a robot. It was that simple, but for him to feel a connection to a being that was just as out-of-place in this world as he was...that was something special._

"_Ryoji...it's Christmas, isn't it? Even though I've lost my internal clock...I can tell," she said in that low tone of hers again._

"_Yeah...it's Christmas..."_

"_Shouldn't you be celebrating with everyone else upstairs?" Aigis asked._

_Every Christmas, S.E.E.S. held a large Christmas party in the main entrance to the S.E.E.S. headquarters compound. Every year Ryoji went to pick out girls of interest alongside Junpei. Every year Aigis worked in her lab until the party was over, only going up to socialize with the people she had known and loved for so long._

"_Ryoji...if I can't see you again..." Aigis began to mutter as he held her new hands of flesh. He knew the reasons why she had changed from a robot to a human...this is something he would have to do._

"_Then this would be the last time you'd be with me..."_

"_W-" Ryoji placed his hand on her mouth before she could voice her objections, before placing his lips on hers. For the first time since she was created, she felt a sensation wash over her that was entirely pleasing to both her mind and her senses, and then, abruptly, it ended as Ryoji pulled back and began to speak._

"_Aigis...I know what I must do now, before it's too late...I must purge the world of evil before evil has a chance to purge the world from its very existence...you chose to forgo your immortality, now I see I must do the same and atone for my own sins..." Ryoji said, placing his head next to her ear. She gasped. She wanted to open her eyes, to look into Ryoji's, but she couldn't. All she could do was lay there and wait for her body to naturally heal._

_She felt Ryoji's presence drift away, and within a few seconds, he was gone. Out the door and into the corridor. Born as a demon yet living as a human, he would need to make a choice for his own survival. A choice unknown but to the Fates._

_Ryoji officially disappeared six days later, on New Year's Eve, along with Yukari and Minato. Their disappearances were seen by many as treason, but to the few who knew their true motives, it was an act of courage. An act of personal self-sacrifice to save the world._

_Aigis opened her eyes on New Year's Day to the realization that Ryoji was gone, and assumed dead. She replaced her natural eyes with her old synthetic ones, because at least with a machine, the world didn't look so grey..._

"Stop!" Aigis shouted, running as fast as she could towards the figure floating in the sky. Coming to a small tree line, she immediately ran past it and came to a halt in a small clearing just next to a large patch of boulders. On top of one of the boulders, standing proudly with his legs pressed firmly against the rock, was a man in a large, brown overcoat who wore an eye patch and carried with him a silver armband.

However, it was not this man whom she was interested in right now. Directly below him were two bloodied men, obviously starving and mistreated. Covered in blood, one of them wore an eye patch, too, and was staring into Aigis's eyes with a fervor that only a parent could give to a child.

And the other man Aigis knew all too well. The tattered clothes and ruffled hair didn't hide his empathic eyes nor his battered yellow scarf.

Aigis took a small breath, just as the rest of S.E.E.S. came rushing through the tree line, before they all caught a glimpse of the three men just as Aigis muttered a single name.

"Ryoji."


	12. Magnificence

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter XI: Magnificence**

"Ryoji..." Aigis muttered, shifting on her feet. The rest of S.E.E.S. had followed her to this spot, and unsurprisingly were in as much shock as she was, if not for the fact that Ryoji and Takeharu Kirijo were nestled, bloody on their knees in the middle of Transylvania, then for the fact that the man who was standing over them was none other than George Sears: Commander of the Free Masons and _ex officio_ Chairman of the Valley of the Queens.

"H – hello beautiful," Ryoji managed to say, looking in Aigis's direction while not looking directly at her, before collapsing onto the ground.

"Ryoji!" Aigis shouted, starting to run over to him before Mr. Sears pulled a gun from his overcoat and shot it towards the sky. Aigis stopped, and within a few moments, an imp dropped from above and lay on the ground, dead.

"Madame Sanada, it's been far too long..." he said, grinning from ear to ear before putting the gun back in his coat, stepping down from the boulder and looking over at Aigis. Mitsuru stared at the man. The very same man who, two years ago, murdered two of her agents in the Caribbean.

"I told you I have nothing else to say to you, Sears. Nothing. You murdered my people...my friends..." Mitsuru said as Mr. Sears stepped onto the ground in front of Aigis, staring at her perfect blue eyes and wondering if there was a glint such as that in his own.

"I did not _murder_ them. They were trying to steal paranormal property which was under our juris-"

"They were kids!" she shouted, taking out her evoker from the inside of her blouse and aiming it at her head. "They had a future ahead of them, god damn you! God damn you, Sears!" she shouted, pulling the trigger to her evoker and shouting the name of her persona.

"Artemisia! Bufudyne!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. Artemisia, freed from her slumber, tugged on the chain she held in her hands and summoned a massive block of ice around Mr. Sears.

With a single snap of a finger, Mr. Sears had simultaneously dispelled the bufudyne strike around him and sent Artemisia reeling back into the sea of Mitsuru's soul, causing her to grip her head in pain and clench her teeth to the point where there was a tiny stream of blood coming from her mouth. She didn't want to scream. No. Hidetoshi and Chihiro didn't scream when they were murdered. She wouldn't disgrace them by screaming now.

"Tell me, Madame Sanada. Tell me how exactly you plan on defeating the vampires and their Master when you can't even defeat a spiritually aware human such as myself?" he asked, taking a few more steps towards Mitsuru. Takeharu said nothing.

"Can you tell me how, in the name of God, you expect to get out of this region of the world alive?" he asked again, pulling out a cigar from his coat this time, but put it in his mouth without lighting it.

"We didn't come here because we wanted to live...we came here to save people's lives..." she said through clenched teeth, she wanted to go unconscious from the pain. Lye on the ground and let the pain ebb away slowly, but she knew he wouldn't allow that.

"You expect to save the world when you can't even save your own life? Madame Sanada, I don't know anymore whether or not it was a good idea to permit S.E.E.S. into the Valley of the Queens in the first place. All I know is that, for the second time in two years, you're trampling on _my_ jurisdiction," he said, yanking the gun from his coat one more time. None of the other members of S.E.E.S. said or did anything. There was nothing there could do, and even if they did...

"That be enough, sir!" Colonel Radic said with his loud and booming voice, which could have easily been misconstrued as a shout.

"And who are...oh...let me guess...Romanian military? I can tell by your uniform...you're even more inept than these poor souls. At least their two operatives behind me got close to stopping this whole mess, your forces have just been-"

"Wait, whoa, wait! Hold it, say that again," Akihiko asked, pointing towards Ryoji and his father-in-law, who was looking at Mitsuru with the concern of a father and the pity of a man who had shared the same rough life as she had.

"Which part? The part where you won't save the world or the part where these two tried and _failed_ trying to stop this all from occurring, all on your orders no less," Mr. Sears said, prompting Fuuka to step forward to take a look at the two of them to verify their identities. She took her PDA from her jeans and brought it up to Takeharu Kirijo's face.

It was a match. That was all the evidence she needed. The last they had seen him, he said he was going to "stop the tragic cycle of the Arcanum." The very same words Ryoji had muttered to Aigis at her bedside all those years ago.

She turned around to face Akihiko, before nodding her head, signaling that these were indeed the two men they had been trying to find – trying to _protect_ – for the last two years.

"Mister Sears...these men were never on _our_ orders at all...now, would you mind explaining what happened to us before things get even more out of hand?" Akihiko asked, putting his hand on Mr. Sears's shoulder and nodding his head over to Aigis, who was kneeling down on the ground with Ryoji's head in her lap.

"They're..._not_ with you? But...very well...come with me, though. It's not safe outside, especially at night..." Mr. Sears said, just as he thrust his pistol to the sky and pulled the trigger once more. Another imp lay dead.

George Sears turned around on his heels, walking towards the boulders and past Takeharu Kirijo, who was eying him with both profound respect and undying hatred. He stopped about ten meters away from the boulders, before turning around again to find that Akihiko, along with the rest of S.E.E.S., had faithfully followed him.

"Good...I see you can at least follow me, can you keep this up so we can all make it to our destination alive?" he said, turning around again to face the forest once more.

It was an ethereal feeling. Walking through the dark Romanian countryside with nothing but the light of the waning moon to guide you. Occasionally, Mr. Sears told them to stop, and they heard loud, savage noises coming from all sides of them. He explained that they were the Black Sea ParaPols. Neither human nor undead: they were mortals who had sold their souls in order to keep fighting the natural order of this world.

Little did they know that you didn't need to sell your soul to fight against the Universe.

After what seemed like an hour of walking, with Aigis and Mitsuru lagging behind to carry Ryoji and Takeharu Kirijo on their backs, respectively, they arrived at a brightly lit cave. Looking down at his digital watch, Akihiko saw that it had only been around fifteen minutes since they had left the clearing. What Takeharu and Ryoji were doing here, along with why George Sears – leader of the Valley of the Queens – was with them, was a question that was about to be answered in full.

They entered the cave. Upon stepping into its stone interior, however, they found themselves transported to a large room, filled with computers and utterly dark with the exceptions of the computer monitor's that virtually littered the room.

"Do you see these artifacts?" Mr. Sears asked to no one in particular when he sensed that they were all safely inside the "room".

"They are the remnants of a bygone age...reminders of our past and safeguards against our future..."

"The hell are you talkin' about, old man? These-"

Shinjiro tried to add an intuitive insult into his sentence, but was cut off when Mr. Sears pointed at one of the screens. All in all, there were maybe thirty monitors in the room. Static covered most of them, but in six monitors there were images of ancient artifacts imprinted onto their LCD displays...

"Those artifacts..."

The Spear of Longinus.

The Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Cyrus Cylinder.

The Cloth of Turin.

The Fasces of Caesar.

And the Holy Grail.

Everyone in the room stared intently on the screens. Only Ryoji and Takeharu made any movement at all.

Jaws dropped, Ryoji struggled free from Aigis's now weak grip and went up to the screen displaying the Holy Grail, touching its LCD monitor before turning back to George Sears, looking into his eyes and trying to see into his soul. It didn't work.

"You know, don't you?" Mr. Sears asked Ryoji, who simply nodded to the ambiguous question posed before him. The rest of S.E.E.S. couldn't be any more confused than they were.

"Excuse me...but...what do you know, Ryoji?" Aigis asked in a sweet voice that brought back the days of her robotic innocence. Ryoji closed his eyes and turned back to the screen.

"Maybe you should tell your friends how I found you two, eh?" Mr. Sears asked Ryoji, going up to him and placing his hand on Ryoji's shoulder, before Ryoji shrugged it off, still staring deeply into the monitor.

There was a silence in the room which nobody dared disturb. Minato stood next to Yukari, motionless as everyone else, before feeling a slight pain in his head...

"_We are...You are...Welcome Back..."_

A chorus of three women was singing in his head. He could feel his cheeks turning red.

"_Come, Messiah..."_

"_Yes...come to us..."_

"_Join us..."_

"_Join..."_

"Takaya," Takeharu said, breaking the silence of the room and forcing Minato to pay rapt attention to the two men as they stared at the Holy Grail in the screen.

"E – excuse me?"

"What?"

"What do you-"

The various members of S.E.E.S. asking their questions soon had their curiosity fulfilled when Ryoji turned around, blinked, and revealed a pair of crimson irises.

"Ryoji!?" Aigis shouted, but Ryoji raised his hand at Aigis to quiet her, before opening his mouth to speak again.

"I can explain, Aigis...but these artifacts..."

"Takaya..." Takeharu said the name again, this time with a little more gusto in his voice, before facing his daughter. "Mitsuru, has S.E.E.S. encountered Takaya since I left it in your Directorship two years ago?"

"W – what!? No, father. We haven't seen him since he fell to his death back in 2011..."

"He's not dead," Ryoji and Takeharu said simultaneously, forcing Mitsuru to shut up. Sweat began to drip down Junpei's face.

"The Holy Grail, the Sixth Holy Artifact of God and the Seal of the Power of Prosperity..." Takeharu said, pointing towards the chalice in the monitor. Its golden frame, embedded with countless jewels, was probably the most beautiful thing any of them had ever seen.

"Aigis...when I left you, I said I would 'end the tragic cycle of the Arcanum', do you understand what I meant by that?" Ryoji asked, looking deep into Aigis's blue camera eyes. The same eyes she had used to glance at him when they first met. She was a machine, and yet he could see her soul: overjoyed and heartbroken.

"I didn't at the time...I still don't," Aigis replied, obviously concerned for Ryoji's current physical state. But the answer was enough for Ryoji to continue on with his explanation.

"Shortly after we defeated the Reaper, I began digging through the archives at S.E.E.S. headquarters looking for information on the Seven Powers of God...Lo and Behold, I found information tucked away in manuscripts that were buried within the very _foundation_ of S.E.E.S. headquarters..."

When Ryoji said this, Mitsuru eyed her father in shock. Had he created S.E.E.S. headquarters for the sole purpose of protecting the documents that Ryoji had sought after? No...he couldn't have...

"It was a pain getting them out, I tell you that," Ryoji chuckled. When he saw no one else laughing, he paused for a moment to regain his breathe, before continuing. "The Seven Powers of God: Mercy, Knowledge, Justice, Faith, Strength, Prosperity, and Free Will. They have, since the beginning of time, been sealed in Holy Artifacts. These artifacts, when brought together and unsealed, give the person unsealing them powers comparable to God himself...the last time this happened was two-thousand years ago, hence..."

"No...Jesus Christ!?" one of the pilots accompanying S.E.E.S. shouted in a surprised voice.

"No." Ryoji deadpanned. "According to the records, the powers were unleashed by a member of a secret organization, similar to the L.O.S.T., trying to bring about the End of the World. The Messiah at the time, who was confirmed to have personae-like powers, was none other than Jesus himself. He was able to stop the organization from destroying the world and re-sealed the Seven Powers of God into the artifacts where they dwell today. They were originally scattered around the world, but beginning two years ago, the Spear of Longinus was stolen from the Vatican..."

Takeharu stepped into the monologue now, taking over for Ryoji.

"The Spear of Longinus is, none other than the artifact which seals the Power of Mercy. Two months later, the Fasces of Caesar were taken from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea..."

"Which brings us to the reason why we're here..." Ryoji said, scratching the back of his head, searching for an easy way to break the news to his friends. "Mitsuru, your father and I have been trying to search for and protect the remaining artifacts. A few days ago, we were close to securing the Holy Grail and preventing it from getting stolen when...when _he_ showed up..."

Even though they knew it was coming, the jaws of every S.E.E.S. member in the room dropped. George Sears lit a cigar and shook his head.

"Takaya's alive. He's been hunting the Seven Powers...and he's the one who did this to your father and I..."

Aigis didn't think she had it in her to hate someone so much, but at the revelation that Ryoji hadn't left her because of who she was...in fact, he hadn't left her at all. He had gone off to do his duty: to protect the people he loved. He had tried to stop the End of the World, even though he was a demon.

Who among them could have known that a human was more capable of evil than a demon, the very Harbinger of Death.

Aigis hated Takaya with all her heart. She wished she hadn't ordered Metis to turn her into an organic human. She wished she still had her albieros, because nothing would be more satisfying right now than driving a bullet straight into Takaya's black heart.

"Ryoji," she said, trying to hide the confusion, anger, and depression welling inside of her. She stepped closer to him, just a little bit, enough to look into his blood red eyes without getting face to face, before slapping him across the face.

Ryoji, reeling, turned back to face Aigis, his hand across his face, before she buried her head in his chest and hugged him.

"You could have told me...you could have asked me for my help..." she said, tears welling up in her eyes as she gripped Ryoji even harder. He blinked and stared back down at her with the blue eyes she had known to love.

"Aigis..."

He didn't hold her, nor was he paying much attention to her now that Mitsuru and Fuuka were trying to get his attention, motioning to come outside with them.

"Mister Sears...I trust the Free Masons will be operating in Transylvania?" Mitsuru asked, looking over at the man with the eye patch who was sitting on the floor, calmly puffing smoke from his mouth.

A quick exhale of more cigar smoke before he looked over at Mitsuru, staring at her like she was a child. In his eyes, she was.

"They already are. Don't get in our way, Madame Sanada."

"And don't get in ours," Mitsuru responded in kind, turning around towards the exit of the cave before raising her voice. "S.E.E.S. Outside. Now," was all she said. Ryoji used one of his hands to loosen himself from Aigis's grip before taking her hand and leading her out of the cave just behind Minato and Yukari. The pilots followed as well, but Colonel Radic stayed behind.

"Can I help you?" Mr. Sears asked as the last of the S.E.E.S. members left the cave's magical room.

"You are of the Valley of the Queens, am I correct?" Colonel Radic asked, taking a cigar and lighter of his own out from his large military jacket.

"That is correct."

Mr. Sears was using a less confrontational voice with Colonel Radic. He seemed disinterested, but then again, he was simply staring at the wall opposite him, inhaling on his cigar every now and then.

"Why do this to them? Why exploit the philosophies of our ancestors?" Colonel Radic asked, taking a few steps to sit beside Mr. Sears. The two men stared at the same wall for a few seconds, before Mr. Sears threw his cigar away and answered his question.

"Because it has been foretold...it is for the good of all Mankind...nay, the fate of our universe may well rest on the shoulders of a few damn kids...Hell if I know why it had to be that way, but it is..."

"And does _he_ know?"

"He knows. Kudos to him for keeping that knowledge a secret for over fifty years and following the guidelines to the letter...Now...to the real question: how the hell does a spiritually inept mortal such as yourself know so much about the Valley of the Queens or, for that matter, our purpose in this Godless universe?"

Colonel Radic chuckled a little before turning his head to face Mr. Sears, smiling through his cigar.

"You'd be surprised," he said, taking his left hand and raising the sleeve of his right arm to reveal a tattoo in the shape of the Earth. Intersecting the planet was an arrow and a sword, and directly surrounding the circle were the Latin words _dramatis personae_.

The two of them couldn't hold back their laughter.

Meanwhile, just outside of the cave, Mitsuru's hastily assembled S.E.E.S. meeting was quickly turning into a heated argument.

"You could have told us! You could have told me! What the hell do you think you were doing? Risking your lives for such a thing!?" Mitsuru shouted.

"Mitsuru, don't forget their goals, we disappeared, too to pro-"

Yukari was cut off by Mitsuru, who wouldn't have any dissension on this issue.

"I know your reasons...but for God's sake...don't you trust us..."

"They don't trust you because of what S.E.E.S. has become...vile and corrupt," Shinjiro said rather hastily, forcing Mitsuru to send a death glare in his direction.

"What we've become? I don't believe this...where has our trust gone..."

Even while they argued amongst themselves, Aigis knew in her heart that Ryoji had done the right thing. He had tried to prevent utter calamity from being released on the world. Even though he failed, it was now their collective responsibility to once again prevent Takaya from bringing about the End of the World.

Yet somehow, even as they bickered and threw their heads up into the sky in despair, no one seemed to notice the three figures hovering just in front of the moon, looking down upon them all with a smile.

ELSEWHERE

"How has Margaret been these days?" the man asked. The long, black limousine was parked outside of a rural high school somewhere in Japan, and the two of them were waiting for the students to be released.

"Margaret? Why do you ask?" the blond woman asked, bending down to retrieve her cell phone from the floor of the vehicle.

"What I want to know is how _he_ is doing," the blond lady said.

"I'm sure he's doing fine. His friends are a competent lot of mortals, anyway..."

A click could be heard. The man with the long nose tried to look down at his wrists, but the metal locking mechanism around his neck prevented him from doing so. Even so, the newfound blood flow he could feel circulating through his right hand told him that a second lock had been released.

"Well...it looks like they are well on their way to reconciling their Sins..." the man said, prompting the blond woman to look over at him.

"Oh! A second-"

"Yes, but more importantly, the students have been released," he said, pointing through the glass at the high school that had stood so empty just a few minutes before.

"Indeed, it has."


	13. Shadow Queens

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter XII: Shadow Queens**

"Quite a nice bunch, if you ask me..." she said, looking down at the bickering humans below as a hawk would follow a rat.

"I can smell their blood from here...exquisite..." the woman on her left said, running her tongue down her lower lip and tasting their scent in the air.

The three pale women were dangling in the air. Their black wings folded behind their backs, looking down at the group below, creating such a racket in the middle of the Transylvanian Night...it was too easy.

"Kill! Kill! Kill!" the woman on the right of her kept chanting, before she had to turn her head to get her to quiet down.

"Akasha! Quiet! They'll _hear_ us...and to have such a fine meal taken away from us at such a time...that would be _unfortunate_...wouldn't it?" she asked, forcing the woman on her right to quiet down and look down upon the humans below with open eyes and a closed mouth. Saliva dripped down her chin nevertheless.

"It's tragic really...and here I was thinking that with all the hype that Revolver was generating about these guys, they would've at least noticed our spiritual presence by now...oh well..." she said, raising her right arm up towards the waning moon and snapping her fingers. Before she could even hear the snap, all three women were gone...

Down below, a group of just over ten humans were arguing to their hearts content, totally unaware of the danger and utter stupidity of the situation.

"How the hell was I supposed to know!"

"You're the god damned Director! That's how!"

"Listen _buddy..._"

"I don't wanna' hear it!"

"damned over-sensitive _bitch_! Slut! Whore!"

Once again Shinjiro and Mitsuru were at each other's throats. Fuuka had tried to intervene, only resulting in Shinjiro pushing her away rather violently towards the ground. Minato and Yukari rushed over to her to see if she was alright, while Junpei walked up to Shinjiro and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey man, I think you've got to-"

"_I_ don't have to do a bloody thing except know the truth as to why this...this lying piece of shit right here-"

"Oh, that's wonderful. Now the civility you once had in moderation is gone completely!" Mitsuru shouted. Akihiko didn't try to pick a side in this. Between his best friend and his wife, he couldn't choose. Mitsuru was totally right in this argument, but the things Shinjiro had been exposed to after they defeated the Reaper...the things he had to reconcile with himself...he couldn't just disagree with the man when he lived such a doomed existence.

"Why the hell didn't you tell us about the situation here before we got here! And _you_!" Shinjiro shouted, pointing to Fuuka lying on the ground being tended to by Yukari. "You can find everybody and everything in the god damned world but the two people we needed to understand the kind of shit hole we're in. Now we're in so deep it doesn't look like we'll get out! Geez, you really fucked it up this time, didn't ya'!?" he shouted again. Fuuka was starting to cry, prompting Yukari to put her hands on Fuuka's shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. She just brushed them away.

It was at this time that Minato looked up towards Shinjiro and stared deep into his eyes.

"Shinji...it's not their fault and you know it..." Minato said, standing up from the ground and taking a few steps towards the man in the crimson jacket. The man he used to know.

"That's bullshit. These two can coordinate all of S.E.E.S. simultaneously for anything in the world, but all they care about is sucking up to those bastards in the Valley of the Queens, vying for their god damned favor."

"That's not true!" Mitsuru quipped, her hand on her head, trying to reduce a swelling headache. "Damn you Shinjiro...damn you..."

"Oh yeah, damn _me_? How about these two _traitors_ over here? After all, that's what you called them, 'traitors', didn't you? Didn't you!?"

"Shinji, that's _enough_!" Junpei shouted, throwing a punch towards the man, knocking him square in the jaw, and reeling in pain as his fist surged with Shinjiro's spiritual energy soon afterwards. Shinjiro simply took his hand and wiped away the small amount of blood and spit that had accumulated in his mouth after the blow. He didn't seem angry, but appeared even calmer than he did a few moments ago.

"The Valley of the Queens is going to be our Downfall, just you wait..." Shinjiro said, turning his back to them all and beginning to walk back towards the cave, when he heard a woman's voice calling out to him. It was monotone, just like Aigis's voice used to be, only this time, it wasn't robotic.

"That statement is incorrect...what is going to be your demise as a Paranormal Police organization...is _us_..."

Shinjiro stopped just before reaching the entrance to the cave. He didn't turn around when he asked who the hell it was that was disturbing him and his colleagues. As far as he was concerned, these people weren't the friends he had grown to love all those years ago.

"Who are we, you ask? Well...if you must know..." she snapped her fingers again, prompting various gasps from behind him just before he saw a pale woman with long brown hair and blood red eyes appear before him.

"I am Pandora, Queen of Deceit..."

Another set of gasps and Shinjiro could hear another woman's voice come from behind him, more dynamic than Pandora's and a hell of a lot less scary.

"I'm Thorne, Queen of Vice!"

And finally, a bloodcurdling scream. Shinjiro moved his head, if only a little, to see all of S.E.E.S. pull out their evokers and aim them for their heads. The headless body of one of the S.E.E.S. pilots lay before them, before another pale woman descended from the darkness with blood dripping from her mouth, introducing herself in shrieks.

"And...I'm Akasha! Queen...of Anger!!"

Shinjiro could feel a hand on his chin, before Pandora leaned in closer to his face and looked into his soul.

"I see your past...you are like us..._you_ have no future, yet you side with them?" she asked, turning her head towards the rest of S.E.E.S., their fingers on their triggers, ready to call forth their personas at any moment.

"Why? Because of the pieces of shit like you that happen to pop up every once in a while and make my life a living hell, that's why," Shinjiro answered. Despite the fact that he was virtually staring Death in the face, neither he nor Pandora made any movements during this interchange. Akasha's hands grew restless while Thorne was keeping steady watch over the boy with the blue hair.

"Such brave words for a mortal..."

"I'm no mortal."

"Oh?"

Shinjiro shook his head away from Pandora's fingers before reaching down for his evoker. Pandora didn't move.

"I'm a member of S.E.E.S. And I don't give a damn about the authority of the Valley of the Queens because, quite frankly lady, if you and your whores don't clear out of here soon, we're gonna' have some _problems_."

"Problems?" she chuckled, looking over towards Akasha, who was eying the S.E.E.S. pilots with special attention and interest.

"Yeah, y'see, Castor and I don't exactly get along too well with things like you," Shinjiro deadpanned.

"Well that's too bad, my dear. Just too bad...and I was hoping to savor your spiritual energy, too..."

It was at this point that Pandora began to smile, raising her hand in the air and snapping her fingers, and just like that, the heads of two of the three remaining S.E.E.S. pilots were lopped off. Only Ryoji's quick reflexes saved the remaining pilot from certain death from these Vampire Queens, and even then, as Ryoji blocked the pilot's face with his arm, Akasha had seemingly caused enough injury on the demon to make Ryoji wince in pain.

"Now...now the fun _begins_!" Akasha screamed, jumping in the air and diving towards Ryoji once more. Had it not been for the hail of spirit particles that assailed her, she might have done serious damage to their demon friend, however, when the triggers were pulled and the spirit particles emerged from their heads, the members of S.E.E.S. had never looked more determined in their lives.

Standing in between Ryoji and Akasha, their mere presence a weapon in and of itself, were Caesar and Artemisia, looking into the vampire's eyes to see what degree of humanity she had in herself.

Not too far off, hovering above their masters were Isis, Kala-Nemi, Trismegistus, and Orpheus, posed to attack their supernatural foes at any moment upon their masters' command.

"I don't think you want to anger us any more than you already have," Akihiko said, looking at Akasha before turning around to find a smirking Thorne hovering just above the entrance to the cave.

"_Mortals..._" Thorne whispered, before Pandora descended from the sky and put a hand on her sisters' shoulder, shaking her head.

"Nay, Thorne. Now is not the time...in time, humans, you will learn that our Master is much more powerful than your mere _personas_..."

"You know!?" Ken asked, exasperated, looking at the vampire queens as if this were the first time he had seen such things.

"Oh yes...we know all about the personas, after all, we are all of the same ilk...if it is death that you seek, continue upon your path and face us again...if it is a meaningless existence, then go back to whence you came..."

Pandora once again snapped her fingers, and then, she was gone, along with her two sisters. S.E.E.S. stared up to the sky, towards the white moon which couldn't reflect the blood pooling at their feet.

"What the hell was that..." Yukari asked, holstering her evoker and drawing her persona back into her soul. The other members of S.E.E.S. soon followed, but nobody answered her question, not even Minato, who silently knew the answer...

"That woman...and...Igor...somehow...they're connected," Minato whispered, prompting the rest of S.E.E.S. to look at him with curiosity.

"Igor?"

Minato stretched his arm out towards the moon, hoping to catch a brief glimpse of the power hidden within...

"_We'll be watching over you..." _she had said, just before she left through the portal alongside Igor.

"Elizabeth...Igor...where are you?" Minato whispered again, before collapsing towards the ground in a sea of memories. Just before he closed his eyes and drifted back into the world of his 'Knightmares', he thought he could see a blond woman reaching out to him from the darkness.

_Igor and Elizabeth were standing before a massive black gate, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Elizabeth couldn't help but gasp at how huge the structure was. Taller than any human structure, past, present or future, the gate stood in a desolate landscape stretching towards the Heavens..._

"_Igor...this is..."_

_Igor looked over at his assistant, nodding slightly cheerfully and yet fearful at the same time._

"_This is where it all began...all those eons ago..." he said. Aside from the gate and them, there was nothing in this sea of red sand except for the ever lurking presence of Death._

"_What...what will you do?" Elizabeth asked, drawing from her dress a pack of cards._

"_No, Elizabeth...normal personae can't even survive in that realm...we must be vigilant and patient...we must prepare-"_

"_You will do nothing of the sort!" a male voice shouted, snapping his fingers before revealing several high pitched female groans and screams from afar._

_Igor cocked his head at first, before turning his entire body around to face the man who had interrupted his sentence. Sure enough, hovering in the air, his Satanic wings flapping at a painfully slow rate, was Lord of the Vampires, Count Dracula._

"_I see you have returned to the Wastes from whence you came as well, Dracula?" Igor asked, closing his eyes and simply smiling._

"_No need for formalities, my dear Igor, no need at all. But I have not come back to these Wastes. The Wastes have come back to _me_...you see, it's painfully clear what must be done for both this universe and ours..."_

"_You and I both know there are only two paths we can walk on in this journey...and I won't let you destroy this Universe..." Igor said, reaching into his jacket to reveal a set of cards, each had a mask on the reverse side. The obverse sides were simply black._

"_Still clinging onto those pathetic homunculi that you call personas, Igor?" Dracula said, closing his eyes and smiling as his three queens emerged from a dark portal behind him. Elizabeth instantly drew several cards from her deck towards her face._

"_So, how about it, Igor? Shall we devils finally have our day...come now, enough is-"_

"Enough!" the main shouted, shooting his revolver into the air. Before him stood three vampire queens, their heads towards the ground, while another male vampire hovered in the air, his crimson eyes never leaving the man on the throne before him.

"I want them dead...I want them all dead..." the man said, reaching into his pocket and grabbing a bottle of pills, popping several of them into his mouth simultaneously.

"Sir-"

"You heard me!" he shouted, aiming his revolver at Thorne, whose insolent comments were beginning to annoy him.

"A display of such violence is not necessary, sir...I will _personally_ deal with the 'threat' these mortals pose to our plans..." the male vampire with the blood red eyes said.

"That may be so, Dracula...but you've never seen personae in action..."

"Not entirely true sir...not entirely true..." the Count said, and with a single snap of his fingers, he disappeared into a dark portal, forcing the man with the revolver to sit back down on his throne.

"So...the pieces of this twisted play are finally set in motion...let's see who shall die first, hm, Mister Arisato?" the man said, shortly before taking his revolver and pointing it to the white moon above him, firing as if to signal the Second Coming of Nyx.


	14. The Sisters of Fate

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter XIII: The Sisters of Fate**

Minato awoke finding himself lying on Yukari's lap, her head drifting off to the side as sleep slowly took hold of her. Behind her, Minato could see the faint glow of a fire and the low hushed whispers of his comrades...

"...are you?"

"My identity is not of importance to you. However-"

"I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation, miss."

"I perfectly understand what is transpiring here and that is why I acted. Don't mistake my intentions, however, I was forced to do what I did based upon the circumstances I saw at the time..."

It seemed as if Akihiko was questioning a woman...a woman whom he had never heard before, but from what he heard, they were a little more than annoyed at her, completely justifiable, of course, based around what had happened just before Minato had passed out.

He rolled off of Yukari, trying his best not to wake her from her sleep, before placing his hands on her shoulders and guiding her body down to the cold floor. This was something he had done countless times before, when her spiritual energy ran too low after a battle and he had to carry her back to headquarters, but for some reason, the ambient light from the fire and the low tone of his friends added a romantic nature to this entire situation that was oddly appropriate for the moment and, in his mind, quite disturbing. He shook his head to clear himself of these thoughts before resting her down on the ground and turning towards the fire...

"Your answers still don't explain-"

"Her answers don't explain a damn thing!" Shinjiro said darkly, his face turned away from the rest of them.

"Hey, she came to our aid, why are we-" Junpei was cut off by Akihiko, raising his hand to Junpei's face and looking at the blond woman once more. She had long, curly hair and was dressed in a deep blue business suit.

"You know...we used to know a woman that dressed oftly like you..."

"I do not see how this is relev – ah! The boy with the blue hair has awakened!" the woman said, standing up from the floor and instantly walking over to Minato. She stretched her arms out before embracing a surprised Minato with a sense of relief.

"I see you have made it through your tumultuous journey back to the state of consciousness..." the woman said, ending her embrace but still holding on to Minato's shoulders. In his eyes, his sense of astonishment shone brightly.

"Um...who exactly _are_ you?" he asked, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment and confusion.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I haven't properly introduced myself, have I? I am Margaret, it is a pleasure to meet you, uh..." Margaret closed her mouth, obviously confused, before it occurred to Minato that she didn't even know his name!

"Just call me Minato," he said, before she clapped her hands together and hugged him again.

"Yes, I apologize. My sister only briefly mentioned your name before I was enthralled by your story! I set out to find the 'boy with blue hair', and who would have thought that I would find him, fighting evil nevertheless, in the Transylvanian Wastes!"

"E – excuse me? Your sister? Who might she be?" Minato asked. Personally he had no idea who this woman was or how she knew him, all he knew right now was that the attention of everyone in S.E.E.S. was on him right now. He was the center of attention in a small, dark cavern illuminated by a single agi fire...

"Elizabeth, I assume you know her?" Margaret said, a slight gleam in her eyes as she said this. Although most of S.E.E.S. had forgotten about the woman from six years ago, Akihiko and Junpei's memories hadn't failed them. Minato's jawed simply dropped.

"Elizabeth!? As in 'ass-kicking, persona wielding, inter-dimensional warrior hotness Elizabeth!?' That Elizabeth!?" Junpei shouted.

Yukari's eyes fluttered a little from the noise, before mumbling something incomprehensible and turning on her side.

"I wouldn't say my sister was any of those things, but she does wield personas...more than one actually, can you believe it!?" Margaret said with such enthusiasm that she almost didn't notice Minato slowly shaking his head, his hand on his forehead.

"I don't believe this...you're Elizabeth's _sister_?" Minato asked.

"Yes, does this come as a surprise to you?"

"I want to say yes, but knowing Elizabeth..." Minato said. She said she would be watching over the world until it needed him next. When the hell was that going to be!? And how come she never told him she had a sister!?

He sat there, thinking of how he was going to revise his relationship with Elizabeth with this new revelation, before Mitsuru clapped her hands once, signaling for them all to pay attention to her.

"Regardless of what your motives are," she said, pointing to the S.E.E.S. armband that adorned her left arm, "by my authority in the Valley of the Queens, I demand to know how you brought us to this safe haven of yours."

"Oh...actually...I really shouldn't," Margaret said, rubbing the back of her neck, before Mitsuru walked up to her and looked deep into her amber eyes.

"Listen...Margaret. I appreciate you getting us to safety after that..._incident_...but our prime objective was to rescue my men that were lost in a helicopter crash in the region we were searching. I don't know what their condition is, or even where they are. What I do know is that every second we waste here, the higher the chance for those..."

"They're not demons," Ryoji said, standing up and blinking his eyes to reveal his red irises again. "Trust me."

"You too? You know of their true nature?" Margaret asked, tilting her head in amazement. How could another spirit as herself be-

"I know they're not demons because I am one myself...and I also know they're of the same spiritual resonance as yourself..."

"Ryoji, what are you talking about?" Minato asked, raising his hands towards his friend, trying to defend Margaret from what he thought of as a hostile tone in Ryoji's voice.

"Minato...observe..." Ryoji said, clapping his hands together and disappearing into the air. There was silence in the cave after that, so much so that not even a molecule could move, before Thanatos appeared from a dark vacuum behind Minato and drew his sword.

It was then, his blade pointed at Margaret's throat, that Ryoji began to speak as a demon once again.

"Observe..." he said. The air ripped with the sound of his voice and the various members of S.E.E.S. thought they had to shield their ears from the experience before the sword began to glow. Almost instantly, a black glow began to engulf Ryoji. This glow, however, was offset by the fact that almost everyone else in the cave – with the exception of Margaret and the one surviving S.E.E.S. pilot – began to glow blue. Thanatos never released his eyes from her, before Minato opened his mouth, never taking his eyes away from the woman.

"Ryoji, what exactly are we looking for?"

"That woman doesn't give off spiritual emissions, and yet she's capable of using spiritual energy for skills that even some members of S.E.E.S. can't pull off..."

"As I explained-"

"Ryoji's right. What's going on here!?" Akihiko said, raising his voice.

"If-"

Margaret's attempts to explain herself were met with hostility as S.E.E.S cut her off at every opportunity. Cornered and frightened, she looked towards the 'blue-haired boy' to help her. Her amber eyes met his, and for a brief moment there was a sense of connection between the two of them in which all the noise around them was cut off. Minato raised his hand and his voice as if on instinct to defend her.

"Quiet!" he shouted. It was the loudest he had spoken outside of battle ever since his childhood. "I have no idea where the hell I am or what happened to me, but it's sure better than getting eaten and _killed_ by vampires! She says she Elizabeth's sister, so-"

"Minato...who the hell is Elizabeth?" Junpei asked, interrupting Minato with a voice as equally loud as his own.

"_We be watching over the world until it needs you again, so don't worry!"_

Elizabeth's final words to him reverberated throughout his brain, just as fresh to him now as they were when she whispered them into his ear six years ago. Minato savored the memory before turning to Junpei, lowering his voice back down to normal decibel levels.

"You'll find out soon enough...right now, the world is in need of a few heroes..."

"Nay. The world is in need of a Messiah..." Ryoji said, turning his head towards the ground and transforming back into his human self. His yellow scarf, indeed all of his clothing, was now perfect and free of the blood and grime that had plagued it earlier. Minato looked over at his demonic friend, nodding his head.

"She said she would watch over the world until it needed such a Messiah again...but with Takaya and the vampires...do you think..."

"I have no doubt in my mind that Takaya is somehow related to the Dracula Clan breaking its truce with the Human Nation...but how?"

"Once again: impossible...we _saw_ Takaya die when he fell from the hotel in Tokyo...he can't be _immortal_..." Mitsuru said. She felt a hand on her shoulder and, upon looking around, saw her father nodding his head.

"Don't tell me-"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mitsuru! Nothing in this world lasts forever...but _we_ saw him attack us for the Holy Grail, which means he _is_ after the Powers of God."

"So what the hell is the connection between the vampires and Takaya!?" Junpei asked, clearly annoyed at the pace of this little discussion. Had it not been for the fact that Shinjiro was soundly asleep right now, too tired to continue his tirade against S.E.E.S., Junpei was sure this discussion would have taken a far more fast-paced, critical course.

"We don't know! We don't even know if there is a connection!" Akihiko said, his voice raised. "Even if we did-"

"Then what do you know!?"

"I..." Akihiko struggled to find words, before shutting his mouth and walking over to where Ken and Fuuka were sitting, reviewing their notes on the region.

"Fuuka...you of all people should know the most about the vampires and Takaya..." he said, kneeling down and placing his hand on her shoulder. She looked away, towards the sleeping figure of Shinjiro a few meters away from them.

"All I know is that the vampires feed on spiritual energy and that Takaya, as a persona user, has an overabundance of it..."

"If that's the case, then they wouldn't be working together!" Junpei said loudly, before Ryoji cut in.

"We don't even know if they are working together. Our focus right now should pin down _why_ Takaya is in the region in the first place..."

Had Margaret felt any less comfortable, she wouldn't have spoken up. Fortunately for her, the blue-haired boy...Minato? He was just as kind and noble as her sister had described him, at least from her first impressions of him. She would impart with them the knowledge that she held...

"They're like me," she said, prompting all of S.E.E.S. to stop talking and look at her.

"Who are like you? In what way?" Junpei asked, taking a few steps towards her, forcing Margaret to back up, before Minato held out his arm and stopped Junpei from going further, ushering her to continue.

"The vampires...they're like me: outside the influence of the Valley of the Kings."

"Outside the...what does that have to do with anything?" Junpei asked, before Takeharu and Ryoji looked at him in deep disgust.

"Everything, I'm afraid...especially since the artifacts that Takaya seeks would effectively give him a seat on the Valley of the Kings..."

"That would mean...what?" Junpei responded.

"He's probably trying to sidestep the power of his persona and bring about The Fall himself..."

"I still don't see how the vampires fit into this," Junpei said, forcing Takeharu to take a deep breath and sigh, before sitting down and looking up at Junpei's face with mild scorn and amazement.

"Think of the Valley of the Kings as a 'council' of sorts for how the universe should be governed...when God committed suicide, he left Heaven's seat in the Valley vacant...this, combined with the fact that we do not know who occupies Earth's seat in the Valley, makes it impossible for the Valley to make any fundamental changes to our universe..."

"Okay, but-"

"Let me finish, damn you!" Takeharu spat at Junpei, before motioning for Ryoji to continue for him.

"If Takaya gains the Powers of God and gets himself a seat on the Valley of the Kings, he still can't do anything without universal consent...and The Fates would never do such a thing..."

"Thank Goodness they're on our side."

"Yes...but if Takaya manages to discover how the vampires elude the Valley's influence...then he can act unilaterally from within..."

"Oh my God..." Mitsuru said, finally coming to the full realization of the situation.

"Akihiko...you may have stumbled across the biggest threat to our universe since its inception...this is no longer about The Fall..." Ryoji said.

Minato came to the full realization of what was occurring as well. His head fell and he sighed. "The End of Everything...Earth...Heaven...Hell...Everything..."

Junpei's mouth fell. And while Margaret had no idea who this 'Takaya' was, she knew that any anomaly in the Valley of the Kings could end the universe as they knew it...

"So...what do we do?" Junpei asked, taking his baseball cap from his jacket and putting it on for the first time in a few years. Minato needed a smoke and Fuuka was chewing on as many packs of gum as she could fit into her mouth.

A long silence filled the cave. The agi fire they had lit earlier flickered a bit before returning to full strength. Nobody dared speak, before Ryoji opened his mouth to formulate their plan. And even before he uttered the first word, they heard the dark shrill of a female voice cut through the darkness.

"You will _die_!"


	15. A Ranson of Blood

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

Author's Note: I apologize for the excessive delay. A combination of writer's block, homework, and other real-life responsibilities has kept me from writing this fanfiction for the past few weeks. Rest assured I will complete this fanfiction series.

**Chapter XIV: A Ransom of Blood**

Only Margaret's impossibly fast reflexes and her own persona were keeping Yukari alive right now as she lay on the floor, scared for her life and reaching desperately for her evoker. She would have been able to reach it, had she not been pinned to the floor by a pale woman with razor-sharp fingernails and even sharper teeth.

Akasha.

Saliva dripped from her fangs as she bared them towards the frightened Yukari, turning her head forwards to look at whatever had caused her from obtaining her prey.

"You will not harm this girl!" Margaret shouted, her hands in front of her as her Persona stood behind her. He was a fair, naked man. Strumming a harp almost as beautiful as that of Orpheus, his eyes only opened when he stopped strumming. His name was Apollo, and he only had to glance at Akasha to keep her away from Yukari.

"You too? My my...I never thought I would see another bastard child of the universe right _here_..."

"You leave this place now!" Margaret shouted.

"And by whose authority do you give that command? The _Valley of the Kings_? Hah!"

"You and I both know..."

"_Yes..._I _do_ know...to people like us, the Valley of the Kings is a mere puppet reality, set up by the _real_ creators of this universe to act in their stead. So why do you submit yourself to such an insubordinate institution..." Akasha asked. If she wanted to, she could kill Yukari right now, but in the split second it would take to extinguish this mortal's life, Margaret could easily extinguish hers.

And considering she was not a resident of this realm, her soul would be lost for all eternity, and that would be no fun at all.

No.

What she _would_ do, is kill Margaret first, and then murder each of these humans undeserving of life.

She slowly stood up, looking each of them in the face at least once before turning to Margaret. Yukari never left her range of peripheral vision. The members of S.E.E.S., their palms gripping their evokers, never took their attention off of Akasha or Margaret, before Margaret surprised them all by raising her hand towards them.

"Do not intervene...I cannot offer an explanation now, but-"

"That's bullshit!" Junpei shouted, yanking his evoker from its holster and raising it to his head, pulling the trigger.

"Trismegistus, agidyne!"

As soon as the persona emerged from Junpei's head it was engulfed in a bright red glow, just as it outstretched its arm towards the vampire queen, Junpei began shouting, gripping his head, and fell to the floor, crying.

In front of them, Trismegistus's arm began to twitch and convulse. In a matter of mere milliseconds, its arm tore from its socket and it disappeared into the sea of Junpei's unconscious mind.

Akasha smiled and wiped spittle from her mouth with her hand, before raising her hand to the ceiling of the cave.

"I cannot offer you my mercy and you do not have my thanks...but you have my pity..." she said, closing her eyes and slamming her hand down upon her forehead, gripping it so hard that she began to dig into her skin with her nails.

There was no blood.

"_Trismegistus...come forth!_"

"Damn! Get back! N-"

Before Margaret had any time to force a spiritual barrier in front of her, she was blown back into the side of the cave by a strong fire-based attack.

Akasha stood victorious, Trismegistus by her side, looking over at Margaret's limp body and the unconscious heap of flesh that everyone else in the cave knew as Junpei Iori.

"Pathetic. To think a Horseman of Death was defeated by you...the Valley of the Kings should be ashamed of itself..."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean!?" Mitsuru shouted. Her voice was a mixture of fury and anguish. What had started out as a routine patrol was now a nightmarish experience with three of her friends in imminent danger.

"Oh? You don't know...The Valley of the Kings is-"

"Akasha! What is taking you so long!?" Another female voice could be heard. This time, from the shadows, clad in an ornate and provocative dress was the second vampire queen: Thorne. Her blood red eyes staring deeply into the crimson of the S.E.E.S. armbands. It reminded her of their blood, of their spiritual energy. She had never feasted on a persona-user before, but someone endowed with the same life force as her own...she just couldn't wait any longer.

"I trust you have taken care of our little _problem_?" she asked. The two vampires never taking their eyes off of S.E.E.S. in front of them. Yukari was still very, very still. Her palm gripping her evoker as hard as she could while all Minato could do was look on in horror and despair.

Only Ryoji made a move, barely noticeable and hardly recognizable: he blinked, changing the color of his eyes from blue to red in an instant.

"So...sister...what shall we do with them?" Thorne asked, sweeping her arm across the cave to inquire about the fates of these mortals.

"I have tasted the forbidden fruit...A persona has a taste like none other..."

"Then that is good to hear, perhaps-"

"Perhaps you would like to leave before your souls are ripped to shreds?" a male voice asked them. The two of them instantly focused their attention on a single figure in the group, staring them dead in the face: Ryoji.

"Ryoji, don't!" Aigis said, stretching her hand towards his shoulder, before he took off his scarf and threw it behind him. She caught it effortlessly.

"Don't lose it," he said, never once blinking his eyes as he stared into their cold, bloodthirsty eyes.

"Oh? And whom might you be?"

"By my authority in the Valley of the Kings, I order you to leave immediately!" Ryoji shouted.

The two vampire queens simply lolled their heads to the side before chuckling. Rather, it was Thorne who began to chuckle, whilst Akasha broke into unfettered laughter.

"You must be under the impression that we give a damn about what the Valley of the Kings states-"

"I'm a Chairman," Ryoji responded, forcing both queens to stop laughing immediately and bring themselves to attention. Akasha glared at Ryoji as if he were a demon worse than she and Thorne merely closed her eyes.

"A Chairman, huh? Well...that makes things...different..."

"If you dare touch anyone else in this cave, I _will_ kill you," Ryoji said whilst the rest of S.E.E.S. looked on in awe. Under different circumstances, this situation would have been greeted with celebration. Only now did the members of S.E.E.S. feel chills up their spines.

"Well that's too bad for us, then...or maybe for you..." Akasha said, reaching down and grabbing Yukari forcefully by her hair, yanking her up so that she was dangling off of the ground and shielding Akasha from any possible harm. She didn't scream and she didn't cry. No. That wasn't who she was. What she _did_ do was let go of her evoker just in time for Ryoji to jump and catch it in the air, twirling it before his fingers and pointing it at his head as he shouted his second name.

"Nyx!"

By the time anyone had noticed, the three demonic beings were gone, and so was Yukari. The gaping hole Ryoji tore into the ceiling when he transformed into Nyx told them that they were a considerable distance underneath a mountain and that the waning moon overhead was their only salvation.

Minato turned his head towards Margaret's limp body. She wasn't dead, as he could still see her chest moving with her breathe...but...this woman. Could they trust her? She seemed to know the vampire queens pretty well...even if they could, how long would it take before their world unraveled before she could fully explain her true intentions?

Minato looked up towards the ceiling. He blocked out Junpei's muffled whimpers behind him and felt Akihiko's hand grip his shoulder. Through his peripheral vision, he could see Akihiko staring up at the hole too.

"So...now we'll have to fight for her, too," he said quietly.

"I've always been fighting for her...Now my other self is too..." Minato said back. In reality he didn't want to be saying something so dramatic, but Yukari was the only one who's persona could create a gust to get them out of this place.

He'd have to place all his trust in Ryoji, because if he failed now, then whatever they had been doing up until now would have been for naught.

"Do your best Ryoji...I'm praying for you..."


	16. Demonic Showdown

Shin Megami Tensei

Persona 3: ParaPol

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Persona 3, SMT, or any characters within. They belong to Atlus.

**Chapter XV: Demonic Showdown**

Bearing his sword against the light of the moon, Nyx gripped his sword tightly as he faced off against the two vampire queens: Akasha and Thorne. Akasha held Yukari close to her, her fingernails against her throat, whilst Thorne hovered motionless in the air, lightly smiling at the demon.

"_Release her!"_ Nyx said in his demonic voice that was also partly human. _"By my authority in the Valley of the Kings, I demand it."_

"We will bow down to your authority in the Valley of the Kings on only one precondition..." Thorne said, materializing a fan from behind her back and waving it towards her face.

"_That would be?"_ Nyx replied back.

Thorne only smiled. Before Nyx got an answer, she had disappeared and was behind the demon, swinging her fan in several directions and creating winds with such ferocity that they slapped themselves against Nyx's back almost to the point where he could feel his life draining from him. It took him a few second before he swung his sword behind him and negated the effects of her fan, but by then the damage had been done and Nyx was forced to reevaluate his situation.

"Our condition is that you and your friends immediately leave this region upon her release. That you do not interfere with us again and that you do not contact any of the local ParaPols after this point," Thorne said, pointing at Yukari. "If you don't...then the girl will _die_."

As soon as she said this, Akasha smiled and tightened her grip on Yukari's throat, forcing her to use both her hands to try and pull Akasha's arms away from her, disregarding the fact that all four of them were hovering several thousand meters in the air and she no longer had any way of summoning her persona to save herself if she fell.

"_Well...since you put it _that_ way..."_ Nyx paused, if only for a moment to look at Yukari's struggling body and clenched eyes. _"No."_

"You have made a mistake, chairman," Thorne said, closing her eyes and snapping her fingers.

"Die!" Akasha shouted, immediately letting go of Yukari and throwing her towards the ground below. Without her evoker and hurtling towards the ground at several hundred meters per seconds, she did the only thing she could think of in such a situation: she creamed at the top of her lungs and prayed to whatever God there was that something...some_one_ would save her from imminent doom.

Before Nyx could dive down towards Yukari, a furious Akasha was charging at him, fangs and claws in plain sight. Nyx looked between the two women for a split second, enough time to throw his sword by the hilt towards the demonic queen. Her reaction as the hilt hit her in the ankle was just enough time for Nyx to dive straight down towards the earth below and outstretch his arms towards the falling S.E.E.S. member that he had sworn to protect.

She was falling and screaming as the wind howled against her. Her voice almost inaudible against the winds of fate that would take her life as she hurtled down towards the treeline. In her vision, she saw Nyx rushing down towards her, his hand reaching out for her. She saw the two vampire queens chasing him, disinterested and hungry for blood, and she saw the reflection of the moon in the beautiful white sword levitating in the sky.

_The moon...it's so..._

Gripping her in his hand, Nyx immediately used his wings to fly parallel to the ground, swerving around birch trees and looking behind him as he saw the two pale vampire queens screaming for his blood and spiritual energy. As Yukari's hair swayed in the wind, the air resistance too great for her to keep her eyes open, she heard the same demonic voice that she had hoped to kill seven years ago ring out in her head.

"_For behold, I am the Truth and the Light. Under the light of my sword, no harm shall come to thee and you shall be safe, for upon the hour of darkness, Salvation shall appear..."_

"That's a pretty verse...where's it from?" Yukari asked, her voice barely a whisper. Any mortal would not have been able to hear her through the wind, but Nyx faithfully responded to her question.

"_It is from the Gospel of Judas..."_

Had Yukari been in any other situation, she would have been alarmed by that. The fact that the Gospel of Judas was kept in a high-security vault in Yakushima Headquarters was no laughing matter.

But considering the gravity of the situation and the apparent truth in the words, she was willing to let this transgression slide. At least Mitsuru wouldn't find out.

After that, she heard nothing. Nothing but silence. Even the air around her seemed to stop flowing as Nyx weaved in and out of the tree line, dodging the occasional dyne-level elemental attack from the two queens behind him.

"_I believe it is time to go back to the others. They are waiting_," Nyx said, raising his free arm into the sky and calling to his sword.

"_Traesto!"_

From the tip of the sword levitating near the Moon, a bright light began to gather. At first, it seemed as though the moon's reflection was merely shimmering against the blade, but soon it became apparent that this light was no mere shimmer. As it began to expand, engulfing the surrounding region in a sea of white, the two vampire queens shielded their eyes from a blast of intense radiation as the light expanded and shot upwards towards the Moon.

Before they knew what had happened, Nyx, and more importantly, Yukari, were gone. They had vanished behind a sea of white light from a sword that now intermingled in the space between dimensions, wielded by a demon who was no longer there.

"Ah...they got away...Akasha, you mustn't be too forceful with them...it would be..._detrimental_ to our benefactor's will."

"Thorne, know this," Akasha declared, looking out over the horizon towards the smoke where Nyx used to be, her face crunched up in an evil smile that reflected her blood lust. "When I find them again, the Akashic Arts will be unleashed...and I shall spare no remorse for the benefactor's feelings about the matter," she said, just as she bit into her arm to satisfy her thirst for blood.

Thorne simply shook her head before raising her hands to the sky, snapping her fingers once more as the two of them drifted away into nothingness.

BACK IN THE CAVE

"Junpei! Junpei, wake up!" Fuuka shouted as she lightly slapped Junpei's cheeks. It was to no avail. Both Junpei and Margaret were solidly unconscious and Minato was brooding, hunched over Margaret's body staring at his evoker as if he could have prevented this scenario.

"Ryoji...please don't fail..." he prayed, shutting his eyes and imagining Nyx and the two demons fighting in the middle of the sky before he heard a voice call out from behind him.

"Fail? Me? I'm surprised you think so low of me!" he shouted in an arrogant tone inappropriate for the solemnity of their predicament. Minato turned around to find Ryoji standing near the remains of the fire, carrying an unconscious Yukari in his arms and grinning wildly as if he had saved the world.

"You have to read the Scripture, my friend. There's a lot to be said in the Gospel...especially that of _Judas,_" Ryoji said, putting Yukari down on the floor as Minato ran over to him, looking in his eyes for a moment as if to thank him, before crouching down and examining Yukari's limp form. The rest of S.E.E.S. had turned around to glance at Ryoji, Mitsuru in particular after hearing the mention of one of S.E.E.S.'s most prized artifacts.

"You know of the-"

"Mitsuru, for the last two years I've been around the world with your father hunting down artifacts that have been lost since time began...I _think_ I can handle the S.E.E.S. security vault," Ryoji said, sparking a small chuckle from Takeharu Kirijo.

"Mitsuru...at a time like this, I believe everyone needs to hear the good word of Saint Judas, shall we?" Takeharu commented. He looked at Mitsuru, as if to sway her by his eye alone.

"Alright..." Mitsuru said, looking down towards the three unconscious bodies before looking back at her father. Clearing her throat, she began to recite a passage from memory. It was a passage she held very dear to her...

"_And lo, remorse and sorrow cross the land. I am the sinner of thy heart, the holder of thine dreams, the killer of thy God. And whosoever shall set forth on this land upon posterity it shall be known to them that a traitor and a saint hath lived here. For only by the marriage of these two is one truly the human neither vows to protect. I have seen the Shadows and have lived in the Light. I have traveled the earth with a messiah and lived as a devil, and whosoever calls me a liar shall be a liar unto himself when he denies the truth that in equality, all things remain true, all transactions fair, and the just and mighty just as terrible as the sinful and decrepit. For tonight I may not have dined as a man, but tomorrow I will have lived as a King."_

"So...so what? What the hell does that have to do with anything we're in right now?" Ken asked as he knelt down beside Junpei.

"Don't you get it, boy? Judas wrote this after the Last Supper with Christ just before the latter sacrified himself to seal a great evil away..."

"Great evil?"

"Let me finish!" Takeharu said loudly, clearly annoyed, "The great evil is not any entity in and of itself, but the Arcanum Cycle that takes the lives of so many...Minato and Ryoji here are merely the newest pawns in this eternal game," Takeharu pointed to the two men, standing side by side and chatting quietly to themselves while looking down upon Yukari.

"That is what Ryoji and I set out to accomplish: to end this cycle once and for all...the only cache is, Takaya is on this quest, too."

"Wait...you mean the artifacts you were after!? The Holy Grail and all them? What the hell do they tie in with-"

"If we can't manage to keep all seven artifacts from Takaya's hands, he _will_ cease the Arcanum Cycle, that can be guaranteed, but whether or not he will use its vast spiritual energy for the good of all mankind...well, that's a little more than stretched in my opinion. That was our resolve and that was Judas's too when he wrote this Gospel...now...it is up to those unconscious ones to see if they have the resolve to save Humanity as well..."

"And what if they don't?" Mitsuru asked her father.

"..."

"Now we wait," Akihiko said. "We _have_ to wait...we don't have the equipment to analyze their personas and we sure as hell can't attempt a persona-infusion out here..."

"We know, Akihiko...we know," Minato said, looking at Yukari's face as if she weren't real.

"Ryoji...can they be killed?"

"The vampire queens...I didn't kill them. I used traesto to escape with Yukari in tow. My blade in lost in the dimension between Earth and the Dark Realm. I'm afraid I'll only be able to transform into Thanatos for a while..."

"That's quite alright," Minato said as the remaining members of S.E.E.S. stared at him. "Because if personas really are the mirror image of your soul...then those queens are dead for this..."


End file.
